Eva Yuqing Cao

Research, Visual Design, Creative Writing, Theory

Interdisciplinary Studies: Cornell BA Summa Cum Laude-Comparative Literature. German Studies (German level C1/C2). Class of 2020 Exceptional Senior; Northwestern PhD program in Comparative Literary Studies with Mellon Cluster Fellowship. Home department: German (2020-2023); Harvard University Graduate School of Design. MDes-Narratives (2025. Projected)

Research Topics

1) VR/AR and the philosophy of aesthetics - The application of traditional aesthetics philosophy within the posthuman world, anchored through Spinoza’s realist ontology, Schelling’s conceptions of human’s relationships to Nature and the material world, Kant’s “purposiveness without purposive”, the transcendental turn and Hegel’s phenomenology. Among all forms of emergent technologies, my focus is on those that create visually substitutional realities such as VR/AR, revolutionizing human perceptions and ontologies, as their goals are reaching towards the enhancement of realities, rather than a mere “Mimesis”. Whenever a new, artificial reality is imposed, questions of ethics, “will-to-power”, freedom and determinism, irony and illusion, control and a “wired-brain effect” also arise naturally.

2) Affective architecture, frictional history, and memory - The study of the design of memorials is particularly important as it’s inseparable from trauma studies, with these structures being memory spaces (lieux de memoire) “at once natural and artificial, simple and ambiguous, concrete and abstract, they are lieux---places, sites, causes---in three senses----material, symbolic and functional.” (Pierre Nora). Philosophically, I’m interested in the essence and history of architecture, with a focus on Spinoza’s onto-epistemology and architecture.

Contact

eva_cao@gsd.harvard.edu