“Electronic Literature [Frame]works for the Creative Digital Humanities,” edited by Scott Rettberg and Alex Saum-Pascual, gathers a selection of articles exploring the evolving relationship between electronic literature and the digital humanities in Europe, North and South America. Looking at the combination of practices and methodologies that come about through e-lit’s production, study, and dissemination, these articles explore the disruptive potential of electronic literature to decenter and complement the DH field. Creativity is central and found at all levels and spheres of e-lit, but as… continue

It seems strange during pandemic-induced isolation to reflect on last summer’s ELO2019 gathering, the first time the Electronic Literature Organization’s annual conference and media arts festival was hosted in Ireland. It was a privilege for all at University College Cork to welcome so many scholars, practitioners and colleagues to our campus and city, a privilege that is only magnified now that same cohort is unable to convene in Orlando, Florida for ELO2020. The editors of this special issue would like it dedicated to ELO2020 organisers, whose labour is seen and valued. This collection of es… continue

“Natural media” re-valuates the communicative potential of natural spaces, especially in instances where symbolic import collides with raw matter in a manner that hides from, disguises, or elides stark reality. It considers intersections, collisions, tensions, opportunities, and affordances that arise in the discussion of “Natural Media,” both broadly conceived and in its contributors’ particular areas of research. This collection emerges from a panel hosted by the Modern Language Association’s MS Forum on Visual Media in 2017. The co-editors, Lisa Swanstrom and Eric Dean Rasmussen, first met… continue

This gathering is unique. What differentiates it from other gatherings on the electronic book review is that rather than being compiled and united via subject matter, what unites these papers is that they were all first delivered at the Arabic E-lit Conference in Dubai which took place in February 2018. The publication of conference proceedings may not be particularly innovative. In this way, the gathering works to “Mind the Gap” in the scholarship surrounding electronic literature, providing open access to conference papers that the scheduling and finances of travelling may have made inaccess… continue

Toward the end of William Gaddis’s novel of American capitalism, J R (1975), a truck passes by on a Manhattan Street displaying five dwarves who are house painters and the words, “None of Us Grew but the Business.” At the time of publication, readers might have taken this phrase and Gaddis’s novel itself, as a corporate satire: one that traces (in grueling detail), the construction of a multi-billion-dollar empire by a solitary pre-adolescent, J R van Sant, who owns and operates a conglomerate from his grade school payphone. A handkerchief that he’d put over the mouthpiece makes him sound ‘big… continue