Version 6.0ish. Digital Humanities. Running. Linux.

The first panel I attended at NJCEA was the Teaching With Technology one early in the day. Julie Cassidy was the first speaker. Cassidy spoke about requiring students to creat commonplace blogs for her classes. This is an idea I am going to try and implement into my courses this fall. Right now, I am thinking of using Tumblr for this. ()

• According to Cassidy, blogs allow conversation to begin before class.
• Students are required to pull three quotes for each story/novel/etc
• An example of Dr. Cassidy’s classes.
• Blogs are low stakes, informal, writing, so lots of room for reflection.
• Cassidy has students use WordPress for the assignment. I’m leaning towards using Tumblr.
• The required quotes can be worked into prep for paper writing.

• Over at Grand Text Auto Scott Rettberg has put up some notes from the Remediating Literature Conference earlier this month in the Netherlands.

• I have always been a big fan of Glen E Friedman’s photography ever since I first purchased Fuck You Heroes as a teenager. Via Boing Boing comes word that he has a new book which focuses on photos of the band Fugazi. While I am not a huge Fugazi fan, Friedman’s work is as good as usual and worth looking into.

• The Little Professor links to a series of sites about mental illness and the Victorians. Right now I am doing some research and writing about the Victorian period for two papers I am working on. These links will be very useful.

The final panel of the day was about electronic literature in the 21^st century. Participating were Thom Swiss, Emily Warren, Josh Weiner, Kate Hayles, and surprise addition Stuart Moulthrop. Here are my notes:

Thom Swiss

• How do we think about E-Lit in terms of pedagogy?

• Electronic Book Review has a bunch of interesting new features. I still wish they had some sort of RSS feed however.

Emily Warren

• Works for www.poetryfoundation.org

• They received a few hundred million dollars

• Site is going web2.0

• Mentioned the work of Jim Berhle, a satirist.

• Compared Berhle to the jester in Shakespeare

Josh Weiner

• Who is the audience for E-Lit?

• Are they seeking mass audiences?

• Space between poetry and fiction very balkanized

• Future of E-Lit is in collaboration

Stuart Moulthrop

• Introduced a new hypertext entitled Radio Salience

• Computer gaming culture is growing up

• Good opportunity to open the door up and talk to them about E-Lit

Kate Hayles

• Offerred suggestions for when E-Lit leaves the computer

• Robert Coover’s cave

• Writers of interactive fiction should check out Croquet

• SMS fiction is huge in Japan

• Leave computer behind and move to the world!

People are beginning to post their pictures from the ELO symposium. I don’t have any pictures, but I have been I got while in Maryland. Scott Rettberg also has a up on Flickr. also does.

The keynote speaker for the day was N. Katherine Hayles from UCLA. Jill Walker also has notes up. Here are my notes:

• A simple proposition: “literature” requires words, “the literary” is literature plus artwork which interrogate context, history, and production of literature

• “the literary” is how we talk to coworkers

• Three institutional paradigms

• Department Of Media Arts including film, computers, literature

• Interdisciplinary studio spaces for dissertation writing and student research

• Schools adding faculty lines for E-Lit

• What does it mean to write literature?

• Most assume print is what is meant by literature

• Why is E-Lit considered literature?

• Some examples shown:

• Slipping Glimpse-Would count as literature, but much more is going on. “What it means to read and what it means to be read”

• The Possession Of Christian Shaw

• Code Movie-Legibility of screen under threat…”denumant” is return to structure on screen

• Others mentioned-Birds Singing Other Bird Songs, Text Rain, Shaping Things

• Is ballet literary? Where is the line drawn?

The second panel of the day was about Internationalizing Electronic Literature. The participants were Sandy Baldwin, Laura Castanyer, Bertrand Gervais, Juan B. Gutierrez, Mark Marino, and Jill Walker. The coolest part of the day by far: this panel had their own wiki.

Here are my notes from each speaker:

Sandy Baldwin

• How much of the definition of what electronic literature is comes from western Europe and the USA?

• Process is something we value

• C.T. Funkhouser has a about digital poetry (I think this is the book he was referring to?)

• The EPoetry conference is going to be in Paris this year. In 2009 it will be in Germany.

• Baldwin continued by discussing the role of semiotics in electronic literature

• Baldwin then gave a list of international electronic literature authors (see the wiki).

Laura Castanyer

• She talked about a variety of Catalan authors. See the wiki for the complete list

Bertrand Gervais

• Gervais discussed NT2.

• Web 2.0 gives us the opportunity for decentralized fiction.

Juan B. Gutierrez

• Opened by mentioning links in wiki

• Wonders if there is electronic literature in Korea? What about China?

• Calls for Electronic Literature Organization to be more open to non American E-Lit

Mark Marino

• Began by plugging the excellent site Writer Response Theory. Writer Response Theory also has a comprehensive post up about the symposium.

• A lot of inspiration comes from South American writers like Jorge Luis Borges. No argument there.

• Mentions Gabriella Infinita.

• Has a “novel” version, hypertext version, etc

• Like Michael Joyce, his work “craved” hypertext

• Discusses wiki novels that predate the current one being published by Penguin.

• Wants us to think about how white, male, and English (as in language spoken) we are.

• Just how inclusive is the ELO?

Jill Walker

• Opened by plugging the Elinor Project.

• Discusses Norwegian E-LIT

• Did you know that Norway buys one thousand copies of your book and gives them to libraries?

• However, Norway is not as supportive of E-Lit

• Visual Arts get a lot more support

• Americans don’t know much in general about Norwegian writing besides that one Ibsen play

• Norway does not know American literature either

• Definite language barrier

• Translations will break down barriers

• Prime Directive is published in both English & Swedish

Here are some notes from the discussion that followed:

• A few people on the panel went around asking what exactly do we call literature? How about E-Lit?

• Should YouTube videos and critical code be considered canonical?

• Some video games have narrative components

• Juan B. Gutierrez defined literature as a “linguistic activity”

• Scott Rettberg asked the panelists how NT2 & ELO can work together?

• After some discussion Dr. Rettberg remarked positively “this is the beginning of the narrative, not the end.”

• Jill Walker asked the panel and crowd if all international E-Lit has to be translated?

• Norway is protective of their culture

• Personally I agree with Dr. Walker. Not all E-Lit has to be “cross cultural”

I will have my own thoughts up in a few days.

The first panel of the day was about process intensive literature. The chair for the panel was Susan Schreibman. The panelists were Dene Grigar, Rob Kendall, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, Stephanie Strickland, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Each panelist was given five minutes to talk before opening things up to audience questions.

I did not write down much for anyone besides Dr. Rettberg. Scott talked about Oulipo constraints. Here are some of the things he talked about in regards to electronic literature:

• Rules-Specified constraints

• Non Hierarchal distribution for E-Lit

• Different system of reviews (blogs, etc)

• Global distribution

• “Communitizing” and creating a market of ideas

• How to read ergodic text

• How does format effect output?

He also had an interesting power point which he hopefully, he will upload to the net. has posted to his blog.