E-lit as DH: The Workshop
Thanks to a grant from the Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study at UC Berkeley (2017-18), my colleague Prof. Scott Rettberg from the University of Bergen and I were able to establish a research cooperation within both our universities, in order to explore the relationships between creative practice, digital method based literary research in e-lit, and the use of e-lit in a DH curriculum. Together, we convened a workshop that brought to UC Berkeley scholars and graduate students from different Californian Universities: Prof. Jessica Pressman (San Diego State University), Prof. Jeremy Douglass (UC Santa Barbara), Prof. Mark Marino (University of South California), Prof. Noah Wardrip-Fruin (UC Santa Cruz), Prof. Stephanie Boluk (UC Davis), and Prof. Patrick Lemieux (UC Davis); as well as from Bergen: Prof. Jill Walker Rettberg, Prof. Scott Rettberg, Prof. Mia Zamora and grad student Alvaro Seiça; the University of Galway in Ireland: Prof. Anne Karhio; and, finally, UC Berkeley: grad students Ryan Ikeda and Justin Berner, DH program director Dr. Claudia Von Vacano, and myself.
In 2019 we re-convened again in Santa Barbara hosted by Jeremy Douglass and, as a result, Rettberg and I co-edited a gathering of essays published at electronic book review, “Electronic Literature [Frame]works for the Creative Digital Humanities,” looking at how contemporary research and community practice of e-lit presents us with a particular model of doing DH. In both the US and Europe, DH is a rapidly developing field, and the creative and critical practices of e-lit is one of the fastest-growing subfields of DH research focused on contemporary digital culture, yet little research has been published on how e-lit functions within the evolving DH landscape.
Because of its interdisciplinary nature, DH encompasses both the application of digital platforms and computational methods to traditional humanities subjects through, for example, research databases, digital editions, text mining, network analysis, and different uses of mapping and modeling, and also new disciplines that are dedicated specifically to the understanding of how culture and cultural expression are changing as a result of the digital turn. New fields such as e-lit, digital art, and digital culture fall within this category. E-lit is a particularly salient area of DH research and practice as it bridges creative literary and artistic practice, literary studies, technical analysis, and DH research infrastructure development.
Thus, E-lit sits between and moves across traditional humanities disciplines, which are themselves undergoing a process of redefinition. By initiating a comparative study of the implementation of e-lit as a DH research framework in different disciplines, our current book project is intended to both spur research and curriculum development across academic disciplines and investigate how disciplinary context affects our understanding of literary artifacts made for digital media.
[More info on the workshop here]
Electronic Literature [Frame]works for the Creative Digital Humanities: The Publication
Edited by Scott Rettberg and me, this compilation of essays gathers a selection of articles exploring the evolving relationship between electronic literature and the digital humanities in Europe, North and South America. As we say in the gathering itself, all the essays look “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 the articles in this gathering show, there is a need to redeploy creative practice critically to address the increasing instrumentalization of the digital humanities and to turn the digital humanities towards the digital cultures of the present.
Conceived as an ongoing conversation, rolling out 2-3 articles each month until the end of the year, all contributions are tackling at least one of the four following areas: Building Research Infrastructures and Environments, Exploring Creative Research Practice, Proposing Critical Reading Methodologies, and Applying Digital Pedagogy.”
All essays are Open Access, so check them out at Electronic Book Review: <https://electronicbookreview.com/gathering/electronic-literature-frameworks-for-the-creative-digital-humanities/>
Introduction
“Electronic Literature as a Framework for the Digital Humanities” by Scott Rettberg and Alex Saum
Building Research Infrastructures and Environments
“Appealing to your better judgment: A Call for Database Criticism” By Hannah Ackermans – August 2020
“Something there badly not wrong: The Life and Death of Literary Form in Databases” by Joseph Tabbi – August 2020
“Building STEAM for DH and Electronic Literature: An Educational Approach to Nurturing the STEAM Mindset in Higher Education” by Claudia von Vacano et al. – October 2020
“Documenting a Field: The Life and Afterlife of the ELMCIP Collaborative Research Project and Electronic Literature Knowledge Base” by Scott Rettberg – January 2021
Exploring Creative Research Practice
“Digital Creativity as Critical Material Thinking: The Disruptive Potential of Electronic Literature” by Alex Saum – August 2020
“Addressing Significant Societal Challenges Through Critical Digital Media” by Scott Rettberg and Roderick Coover – August 2020
“When Error Rates Fail: Digital Humanities Concepts as a Guide for Electronic Literature Research” by Noah Wardrip-Fruin – December 2020
Proposing Critical Reading Methodologies
“Collaborative Reading Praxis” by Jeremy Douglass, Mark Marino and Jessica Pressman – September 2020
“Lit Mods” by Álvaro Seiça – September 2020
“Unhelpful Tools: Reexamining The Digital Humanities through Eugenio Tisselli’s degenerative and regenerative” by Justin Berner – September 2020
“Ethics and Aesthetics of (Digital) Space: Institutions, Borders, and Transnational Frameworks of Digital Creative Practice in Ireland” by Anne Karhio – October 2020
“Experimental Electronic Literature from the Souths. A Political Contribution to Critical and Creative Digital Humanities” by Claudia Kozak – January 2021
“Speculative Interfaces: How Electronic Literature Uses Interface to Make Us Think About Technology” by Jill Walker Rettberg – February 2021
“Excavating Logics of White Supremacy in Electronic Literature: Antiracism as Infrastructural Critique” by Ryan Ikeda – January 2021