Mieke Bal (1946) is a Dutch theorist, video artist, and a well-known writer nd feminist. She has been a Professor in Leterary Theory (University of Amsterdam). In 1994 she was a co-founder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). Bal has been teahing at many institutes and universities in Europe, US, and beyond. She is known for her specific way of 'deep reading' artwork (e.g. Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Louise Bourgeois, Nalini Malani), and intertwining her research with various disciplines, such as contemporary and nineteenth-century literatue, psychoanalysis, gender studies, philosophy, bible studies. Bal also works as a video artost, which she approaches as a specific from of cultural analysis.

Now that Mieke Bal is getting olderbeing very active and involved in many art and research projects-she has been ruminating on how to reflect on a full life with different roles and experiences. She did not want to write a navel-staring autobiography and came up with an ABC of Memories, and the concepts these have generated: key terms that have a specific value to her, that interlink as a mesh of meaning, weaving together daily experiences and teaching, her know-how to art making, to the core concepts of her analytical work. This is the 50th book authored by Mieke Bal, and her most personal one.