In an essay spanning modernist and postmodernist poetics, Lynley Edmeades demonstrates how postmodern poetry cultivates “present-ness” by drawing on Lyotard’s concept of “constancy,” Gertrude Stein’s notion of “continuous present” and Caroline Bergvall’s adherence to “non-linearity.”

In this essay, Neil Vallelly answers the question “What is postmodernism?” by demonstrating how disappearance, as envisaged by Jean Baudrillard, “lies at the heart of postmodern theory.” Vallelly also argues for the critical value of postmodernism’s traces in contemporary literature and suggests the adoption of a "methodology that embraces disappearance."

The closing keynote at the Summer 2015 University of Otag0 symposium, "What [in the World] Was Postmodernism," also closes the present collection, here in ebr (December 2016). In December of 2019, McHale's Afterword, Ciccoricco's Introduction and essays by Simon During and Amy Elias will be included in Post-Digital: Dialogues and Debates from electronic book review (Volume 2).

Simon During proposes to unravel the “layered” history of postmodernism in New Zealand. In so doing, the author of this essay treats postmodernism as “an event rather than a period” and describes postmodernism’s development in the epoch of neo-liberalism.

Jacob Edmond argues that while postmodernism might be useless as a theoretical concept or periodization, it nevertheless illuminates changes, both local and global, in the final decades of the twentieth century. Edmond analyzes the uses of postmodernism in the United States, New Zealand, Russia, and China. He shows how the various and even contradictory uses of the term postmodernism allowed it to represent both sides in the unfolding tension between globalization and localism in late twentieth-century culture.

An Introduction to the gathering.

Alexandra Dumitrescu’s essay describes the development of metamodernism in New Zealand and presents metamodernism as an interrogation of “modernist uprootedness or postmodern drifting.”

In response to Jeanette McVicker's review of The Planetary Turn, John Bruni examines what it means to theorize a sense of the planetary.

Andrew Lindquist reviews Michael LeMahieu's Fictions of Fact and Value, examining the influence of logical positivism on American literature of the postwar era.

In this review, Manuel Portela considers Matthew G. Kirschenbaum's Track Changes in light of a "general computerization of the modes of production of writing."

Using recent events of planetary significance as a point of departure, Jeanette McVicker reviews The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Amy J. Elias and Christian Moraru.

Jen Phillis situates Jessica Pressman's Digital Modernism: Making It New in New Media as a rejoinder to "Neoliberal Tools (and Archives)" by David Allington, Sarah Brouillete, and David Golumbia.

Afterthoughts on the end of the sixties, the death of the author, the rise of Theory and the fall of humanism.

In this review of How to Be an Intellectual: Essays on Criticism, Culture, and the University, Christopher Findeisen analyzes Jeffrey J. Williams's assessment of higher education in the United States. Linking the decline of funding for universities and colleges, rising student debt, the exploitation of academic labor, and the digital humanities, the review examines the omission of accounts of "the not-so-remarkable everyperson academic, the untenured, the up-and-comers, and the downtrodden."

Lisa Swanstrom interviews Matt Kenyon, founding member of S.W.A.M.P. (Studies of Work Atmosphere and Mass Production, co-founded with Doug Easterly), an Associate Professor of Art in the Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan, and a 2015 TED Fellow.

In this review of Heather Houser’s Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction, Sharalyn Sanders identifies the hopeful potential for environmental justice via contemporary literature. Finding a solidarity implied between intersectional identities and ecocriticism, Sander’s finds in Houser’s call for “scholarly activism” an antidote to the detachment which threatens to thwart environmental awareness.

In this introduction to her gathering on Digital and Natural Ecologies, Lisa Swanstrom pulls back from the tendency towards apocalyptic speculation that is commonplace in popular discourse of technology and nature. Instead, Swanstrom offers a more grounded discourse that addresses the impact of the digital on the natural.

Katherine Hayles, Hyper and Deep Attention: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25595866?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents

Bernard Stiegler's "Relational Ecology and the Digital Pharmakon."