Selected Scholarly Resources

In addition to the essential critical works mentioned in the How to Teach section, here are other essays and books you may find helpful as you prepare your course.

Bouchardon, Serge. “Teaching Digital Literature: a French Study”

Bouchardon, Serge and Victor Petit, “Digital Writing: Philosophical and Pedagogical Issues,” (10/2019). Argues that writing on a computer necessitates rethinking writing practices because of its  fusion of the technical (material) dimension and its symbolic (or cultural) dimension.  Useful for linking writing practices on a computer with what the computer actually does.

Cayley, John.  ‘The Code Is Not the Text (Unless It Is the Text).’ Electronic Book Review (2002).  An elegant essay arguing against the collapse of categories by a writer who himself has created some codeworks.  Useful for thinking about the relation of code to screenic display.

Grigar, Dene.  “Kinepoeia in Animated Poetry.” Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms, and Practices. (Bloomsbury Press, forthcoming 2020). Useful for thinking about how animation interacts with verbal content.

Hayles, N. Katherine.  Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary (University of Notre Dame Press, 2008).  One of the first monographs on electronic literature, focusing on first-generation stand-alone hypertexts and second generation web works.  Useful for its taxonomy and analyses of early works.

Heckman, Davin. “Learning As You Go: Inventing Pedagogies for Electronic Literature”

Mencia, Maria, editor. #WomenTechLit (West Virginia University Press, 2017). Analyzes and discusses women’s contributions to electronic literature (1990-2010), with a foreword by N. Katherine Hayles and essay by Marjorie Luesebrink among others, featuring a “honor roll” listing women important in the field.  Essential text for women’s writing in/as electronic literature.

Strickland, Stephanie.  “Born Digital,” an essay exploring  what does and does not count as digital poetry. Useful for distinguishing between e-books and other forms of digital texts on the one hand, and electronic literature on the other.

Tschofen, Monique. “The Denkbild (Thought-Image) in the Age of Digital Reproduction.” Theory, Culture and Society, 33.5 (2015):139-157. Argues that an augmented reality work by Caitlin Fisher, Circle, finds a way to transform consciousness that could catalyze a transformation of reality.  Useful for thinking about the effects of immersive environments.