materiality

In one half of a pair of critical reviews looking at recent titles in animal studies, Karl Steel examines Nicole Shukin's Animal Capital (Shukin reviews Steel in the other half). In particular, Steel looks at Shukin's biopolitical framework, and considers how that framework challenges not only our conception of what constitutes the animal, but also--and more to the bone--our conception of the capacity of fields like animal studies.

Following Katherine Hayles, Matthew Kirschenbaum agrees that materiality matters.

John Cayley replays what is literal and literary in the digital.

Lori Emerson introduces a gathering of nineteen electro-poetic essays. This gathering brings together both
critics and creators of electronic poetry; as is usually the case in ebr, the 'electronic' does not exclude, but helps us to reconfigure and revalue poetic works in print as well as define what works in digital
environments.