The new version of the Electronic Literature Directory is now available. The Directory indexes over 2000 original works by some 1100 authors. According to Rob Kendall, “the new version offers a Spanish language interface, a new design, and a number of new features that have been in development for some time now.” Rob also notes that this is a beta-release, and there are some known bugs and inconsistencies.
The Directory is an enormous boon to those of us who teach in this field. Last spring I gave the following assignment to a graduate-level class, with great results:
Choose a single selection from either the short fiction or the long poetry section of the Electronic Literature Organization’s Electronic Literature Directory:http://directory.eliterature.org/
Write a 5-7 page paper that performs a close reading of the work you have selected.
Not all works in the Directory are equally interesting or equally accessible, so you should spend some time looking around and try to choose wisely; don’t be afraid to abandon your choice and look again if the first work you selected isn’t panning out.
For a brief explanation of close reading, see Jack Lynch:
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/EngPaper/close.html
A few additional words about the goal of the assignment. Though unfashionable in the current day and age, a close reading exercise will allow us to take seriously the notion that words on the screen can be subjected to literary analysis that is every bit as rigorous and rewarding as words on the page. However, Lynch’s guideposts above—diction, verb forms, word order—are necessary but not sufficient for close reading on the screen. Some other aspects of the text to consider might therefore include: images, sound, links, motion/animation, code.
The most successful papers will be those that eschew general musings on the nature of electronic literature and instead dive right into a detailed close reading, filled with examples and quotations, perhaps even screenshots, of the text at hand. The emphasis throughout should be on interweaving description and interpretation. If you have the technical knowledge, you should also feel free to discuss the relationship between the language/software used to create the work and the way it performs as a literary text.
Incidentally, you may download a free trial version of a good screengrab program for the PC here: http://www.snagit.com
Papers submitted as online HTML are welcome, but not expected.
A selection of these papers should be available soon from Rob’s WordCircuits site.
Posted by mgk at September 30, 2003 01:14 PMI am looking forward to seeing the selection of results at WordCircuits. Care to point us in advance of that to some of the works at eliterature the students chose to write about?
Posted by: Ross Scaife at October 1, 2003 09:50 AM | Link to CommentOh yes! I've only just started to realise that most of my students have never done a close reading, and since I'd taken that skill for granted in them (yeah, typical new teacher mistake) I've not set up any way for them to learn it.
Next year they'll get an assignment like this one. Thanks for sharing!
Posted by: Jill at October 2, 2003 05:24 AM | Link to CommentYeah, I'll be doing a similar (but smaller) assignment in my intro-to-humanities-computing class next spring.
For what it's worth, I don't think that the Directory is publicized enough. I also think that it should have a scholarly-humanistic-projects section, as the borderline between those and Art(tm) is fuzzy. Perhaps that's too much work, or perhaps I should just ping Rob, or something. But politically speaking, for whatever reason opinions about the usefulness (or harmfulness) of the Directory are divided, and this may ameliorate the situation by making the Directory more inclusive.
Posted by: vika at October 2, 2003 12:25 PM | Link to Comment