In Honor of International Women’s Day
A Bookstore on Bissonnet St. In college my literature courses were filled with Hemingway, Bellow, Shakespeare, Pope, Vonnegut, Milton, Dryden, Hardy, Byron, Lawrence. . . . Yes, the list of men writers goes on and on. Occasionally we would read a poem by Dickenson or a novel by one of the Bronte sisters, but as a whole I had no idea, back then in the early to mid-1970s, that women could be considered serious writers––indeed, were serious writers––rather than a flaw of natural law. So, imagine my surprise when, after settling in Houston in October 1975 after graduating from college, I discovered, a few blocks from my home off Bissonnet St.,…
Reconstituting Annie Grosshans’ “The World Is Not Done Yet”
This week we kick off our new project: to reconstitute Annie Grosshans’ personal narrative, The World Is Not Done Yet. Called “[a] weblication of theoretical poetics,” the work was originally produced with Adobe Muse, another in a series of software programs––like Flash and Shockwave––that Adobe sold to the public but then later decided no longer to support. The date the company gives for its “end of service” (Adobe) is March 26, 2020. To keep Annie’s moving multi-vocal story for the web accessible to the public, therefore, we will be capturing it with the Rhizome Webrecorder and doing a few other tasks to update the work for continued accessibility. Updates include making it…
Collect, Not Correct: A Response to the U.S. National Archives’ Alteration of an Image from the 2017 Women’s March
The news that the U.S. National Archives had altered an image from the 2017 Women’s March to tone down political messages and references to women’s bodies spread quickly on Twitter and generated what can be considered condemnation for the deed. On January 18, the day of the 2020 Women’s March, the U.S. National Archives posted this apology: We made a mistake. As the National Archives of the United States, we are and have always been completely committed to preserving our archival holdings, without alteration. In an elevator lobby promotional display for our current exhibit on the 19th Amendment, we obscured some words on protest signs in a photo of…
Moving Forward in 2020
2020 marks the 8th year that our lab has been on the WSUV campus. We kick off this new year with some changes to our personnel and many, many exciting initiatives. First, we hired recent graduate, Holly Slocum, as the lab’s official Project Manager. Holly served for close to two years as an Undergraduate Researcher in ELL overseeing numerous projects for us. We are very excited to have her expertise and passion in the lab. Staying with us this spring is Undergraduate Researcher Kathleen Zoller who led The Progressive Dinner Party Restored project last summer. She is a Junior in the Creative Media & Digital Culture (CMDC) program and our…
A Successful Presentation at the MLA 2020
The ELL Team, led by Holly Slocum, gave an excellent presentation at the Modern Language Association 2020 conference on Saturday, January 11. We were part of the Electronic Literature Organization’s special session, #594 “Making, Preserving, and Curating Electronic Literature.” Close to 50 people attended the six interactive demonstrations. All visited our station and looked over the materials we brought with us to the event. Participating members of the team included (along with Slocum and Grigar) Kathleen Zoller, Moneca Roath, and Andrew Nevue. The team showed nine of the projects on which we have been working over the last year, including developing the metadata for the ELO Repository; preserving Flash and…
List of Hypertext Literature Published by Eastgate Systems, Inc., 1988-2016
Those of you who have been following the activities taking place in the Electronic Literature Lab over the years may be aware that I have collected copies of 47 of the 48 works that Eastgate Systems, Inc. published since 1988 and validated publication dates for 20 of them. Dating works is not an easy task, mainly because the company did not always note publication dates on the folios or the website and library cataloguers made no distinction between floppy disks and CD-ROMs, designating both as “removable disks.” As I wrote in the essay, “Locating Stephanie Strickland’s True North,” it is important to give a precise date of a work of…
Organizing a Collection of Electronic Literature
One of the most satisfying experiences working in my lab is organizing a collection of electronic literature. Recently, for example, in preparation for writing an essay about Tim McLaughlin’s Notes Toward Absolute Zero, I went through the box of papers and disks he donated last March to the Electronic Literature Organization’s archives, which are housed in the lab. He had already walked me through the manuscripts, box of floppy disks, and folios and jewel cases of e-lit works that comprise his personal collection while we were together for his Traversal at the University of Victoria Libraries. I had already spent days in the summer following that event inventorying the items…
Getting Ready for MLA 2020
We spent the day getting ready for MLA 2020 which is taking place in Seattle, WA this year. Our session, #594 Making, Preserving, and Curating Born-Digital Literature, is included in the ELO’s special session and features the work we have been doing in the lab for the last year. The program describes the session as: This session features interactive demonstrations about the creation, preservation, and curation of digital literary works that take advantage of the specific affordances of digital environments; participants discuss tools and strategies for making digital literature and integrating it into the literature or language classroom. Time: 3:30 PM–4:45 PM Jan 11, 2020 Place: WSCC – Chelan 2…
Focusing on the Feminine: Women, Literature, & Games
Curated by Mariah Gwin, Electronic Literature Lab Online version: http://dtc-wsuv.org/focusing-on-the-feminine/ “Focusing on the Feminine: Women, Literature, and Games” is an exhibit that presents women, literature, and games. It features literature, games, and hardware that date back to the mid-1980s to around 2014. Each item was inspired by prominent women and their works in relation to the Electronic Literature Knowledge Base (ELMCIP) and women featured in games and literary game works. Furthermore, the visit to the Electronic Literature Lab by Astrid Ensslin, Anna Nacher, and Megan Heyward informed many of the decisions made in regards to works to highlight. Left Cabinet Top Shelf: iMac G4 of day, of night by…
Literary Mobile Apps as the Next Frontier of Digital Preservation
As many of us lament the loss of Flash, an event looming in 2020, [1] yet another frontier of digital preservation awaits us: literary mobile apps. Or shall I say, has been looming ever since Evan Young’s The Carrier (2009), the first literary mobile app, [2] went dark a few years back? Or how about the loss of some of my other personal favorites, Aaron Reed and Jacob Garbe’s multi-platform opus, Ice-Bound (2014), which is no longer available for Apple devices? Or Erik Loyer’s haunting narrative, Strange Rain (2011), now gone? Luckily, Loyer has updated his sci-fi work, Upgrade Soul (2012, 2019), which has not been available for a while. Besides the works already…
