Electronic Literature is described as born digital literary work––that is, literature produced with and only experienced on a computing device. Recent exhibits at the Modern Language Association and the Library of Congress as well as featured topics at digital humanities events, like the recent “Digital Cultures in the Age of Big Data” institute at Bowling Green State University, show a growing interest by digital humanists in the form.  Needed, however, to further digital humanities research into and teaching of electronic literature is the opportunity for scholars to engage in a formal, in-depth study that provides a good understanding of electronic literature’s antecedents and traditions, authors and works, theories and methodologies, scholarly approaches, and artistic practices.

Video clip of Judy Malloy’s Uncle Roger, from the Pathfinders project

This course, led by leading scholars and artists of the Electronic Literature Organization, combines seminar and workshop methodologies so that participants gain the background needed to critique and interpret and teach electronic literature with knowledge of its production. It draws upon two major databases, an anthology, and website for the literary works we read:

• Electronic Literature Collections 1 & 2, http://collection.eliterature.org
• ELMCIP Knowledge Base, http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase
• ELMCIP’s Anthology of European Literature, http://anthology.elmcip.net
• Dene Grigar & Stuart Moulthrop, Pathfinders:  Documenting the Experience of Early Digital Literature, http://dtc-wsuv.org/wp/pathfinders