Histories and Genres of Electronic Literature
What:
Lightning Talk
Part of:
When:
1:30 PM, Friday 17 Aug 2018
(8 minutes)
Where:
Pavillon J.-A. DeSève UQAM -
DS-R510
Discussion:
0
This lightning talk will be a presentation of a new book by Scott
Rettberg, Electronic Literature, forthcoming from Polity Press in Autumn
2018. Electronic literature has rapidly developed as a field of
creative practice, academic research, and pedagogy. A growing
concentration of critical and theoretical activity in electronic
literature has corresponded to similar growth in the corpus of creative
work in the international field. With few exceptions however the
research monographs have been narrow in focus and aimed at specialist
researchers. University teachers in the field have had to cobble
together reading lists with no core text available for adoption. There
has until now however been a significant lack in the literature of the
field: few books so far have attempted to constitute electronic
literature in a broad sense as a subject in totality. Electronic
Literature presents five core genres of electronic literature in
historical, technological, and cultural contexts and makes the subject
more readily accessible for students and researchers at undergraduate
and postgraduate levels in disciplines including literary studies,
communications, media studies, creative writing, and art practice.
Electronic Literature offers readers an introduction to digital genres including hypertext fiction, combinatory poetics, interactive fiction and other game-based literary forms, kinetic and interactive poetry, and networked writing. This presentation outlines the approach, methodology, and content of the book, with a focus on why a genre-based approach to teaching electronic literature makes sense, even as genres of electronic literature are more amorphous and difficult to pin down than historical print genres of literary practice. The talk will also reiterate the importance of understanding electronic literature as shaped by specific technological platforms, by contemporary cultural contexts, and by the influence of art and literary movements of the twentieth century avant-garde.
Electronic Literature offers readers an introduction to digital genres including hypertext fiction, combinatory poetics, interactive fiction and other game-based literary forms, kinetic and interactive poetry, and networked writing. This presentation outlines the approach, methodology, and content of the book, with a focus on why a genre-based approach to teaching electronic literature makes sense, even as genres of electronic literature are more amorphous and difficult to pin down than historical print genres of literary practice. The talk will also reiterate the importance of understanding electronic literature as shaped by specific technological platforms, by contemporary cultural contexts, and by the influence of art and literary movements of the twentieth century avant-garde.