Literary Arts at Brown and the Center for Digital Scholarship in the University Library invite you to a presentation:
Electronic Literature: Threads of Practice and Literary Genre in Digital Writing.
Scott Rettberg (Professor of Digital Culture in the Department of Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway)
in Conversation with John Cayley (Literary Arts at Brown)
3:30 Thursday Dec. 5
Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab, Rock 137
In the talk, Professor Rettberg will discuss his new book, Electronic Literature, in which he places the most significant genres of electronic literature in historical, technological, and cultural contexts. These include combinatory poetics, hypertext fiction, interactive fiction (and other game-based digital literary work), kinetic and interactive poetry, and networked writing based on our collective experience of the Internet. He argues that electronic literature demands to be read both through the lens of experimental literary practices dating back to the early twentieth century and through the specificities of the technology and software used to produce the work.
Rettberg will give a brief presentation of the methods and themes of the book, which will be followed by a discussion between Rettberg and Cayley.
Scott Rettberg
Scott Rettberg is Professor of Digital Culture in the department of linguistic, literary, and aesthetic studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is the author or coauthor of novel-length works of electronic literature, combinatory poetry, and films including The Unknown, Kind of Blue, Implementation, Frequency, The Catastrophe Trilogy, Three Rails Live, Toxi•City, Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project and others. His creative work has been exhibited both online and at art venues including the Venice Biennale, Inova Gallery, Rom 8, the Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum, Palazzo dell Arti Napoli and elsewhere. Rettberg is the author of Electronic Literature (Polity, 2019), the first comprehensive study of the histories and genres of electronic literature and winner of the 2019 N. Katherine Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature.