This collection departs from the observation that online forms of communication—the email, blog, text message, tweet—are actually haunted by old epistolary forms: the letter and the diary. By examining the omnipresence of writing across a variety of media, the collection adds the category of Epistolary Screens to genres of self-expression, both literary (letters, diaries, auto-biographies) and screenic (romance dramas, intercultural cinema, essay films, artists’ videos and online media). The category Epistolary encapsulates an increasingly paradoxical relation between writing and the self: first, it describes selves that are written in graphic detail via letters, diaries, blogs, texts, emails and tweets; second, it acknowledges that absence complicates communication, bringing people together in an entangled rather than ordered way. The collection concerns itself with the changing visual/textual texture of screen media and examines what is at stake for our understanding of self-expression when it takes Epistolary forms. The collection Auto/graphic Screens: Epistolary Entanglements in Film, Media and Visual Culture Is the first to interrogate the presence of epistolary forms of writing on screen . It adds the new category of 'Auto/graphic screens' to genres of self-expression and provides a broad perspective upon epistolary forms of writing on-screen, by studying romance dramas and intercultural cinema, essay films, artist's filmmaking and online media.
