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.