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Call for Proposals: ELO 2022 Conference

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) seeks proposals to host the ELO 2022 Conference, Festival, and Media Arts Exhibition (ELO Conference, for short).

Given the progress made with vaccinations and addressing the COVID-19 pandemic the ELO Board of Directors wishes to consider proposals for its 2022 conference and media arts show as a hybrid conference and festival, with live face-to-face and synchronous and asynchronous online elements. We recognize the importance of maintaining the tradition of an event that brings together scholars, artists, and other people interested in digital language arts from around the world, whether they are able to travel or not, and with attention to accessibility and inclusion.

For next year, we wish to consider innovative proposals from individuals or teams from a single or several collaborating institutions that wish to host our conference. We are happy to consider conference proposals from anywhere in the world. We are also open to joint conferences with organizations whose interests overlap with ours, such as ACM Hypertext, SLSA, and others.

Interested parties should contact the ELO President, Leonardo Flores (leo@eliterature.org), for guidance on developing a proposal for the conference. We encourage sending a brief pre-proposal or statement of interest outlining your ideas for the conference no later than May 2, 2021 for feedback and assistance in working towards a full proposal. We will share the ELO Best Practices for Conferences document with those who have expressed interest, and teams interested in hosting the conference will receive support and mentorship from previous chairs. The deadline for complete proposals is May 23, 2021. The Board of Directors will consider proposals and make a decision in its May 30, 2021 meeting.

Conference events, including both physical and virtual spaces, need to follow the guidelines and policies established in the ELO Code of Conduct.

ELO Conference Policies

Future organizers of Electronic Literature Organization events, including the annual ELO Conference and Media Arts Show, will be required to adopt a version of the ELO Community Code of Conduct, appointing an appropriate team to address any reports that emerge from the event’s physical and virtual platforms.

In addition, all ELO events will adopt the following practices to strive towards inclusion and parity.

  • Transparency and Inclusivity in Review Processes. The names of all reviewers and/or curators for any event should be publicly available prior to the submission process. Updates to the composition of the review team should be made public as soon as feasible as changes are made. ELO event organizers are responsible for working towards diverse review teams.
  • Double-Anonymized Review. Wherever possible, conference submissions should be made anonymous for peer review, and the names of specific reviewers on a work-by-work basis should not be made public during the review process. In the case of artistic work (particularly work that is iterative or previously displayed), full anonymization may not be possible; however, the omission of identifying information should be the goal wherever feasible.
  • Clear and Reasonable Deadlines. Deadlines for all stages of event submission should be communicated at least two months prior, with an emphasis on providing clarity and, whenever possible, translations of the call to circulate across the international community. While circumstances may occasionally necessitate closer deadlines, all consideration possible should be given to early communication to enable broader participation.
  • Support for and Compliance With the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Consideration of the status of any potential host country with regards to support for human rights, as documented by the United Nations, will be taken into consideration when choosing organizations to host ELO events to ensure that all members of the community feel safe and welcome in those locales. All conference organizers commit to upholding those values as annotated above.
  • Accessibility and Archiving. The shift to virtual conferencing has enabled the full participation of members of the community left behind by an emphasis on in-person events. Future ELO events should build on the inclusivity and accessibility enabled by virtual conferencing, prioritizing access in both physical and virtual venues, and following principles of universal design wherever possible. Events focused on physical participation should be documented, streamed, or otherwise made available through the ELO’s archival projects.

You can download a PDF of this CFP with this link.

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CFP: Emerging Spaces for E-Lit Creations

Call for Proposals: Emerging Spaces for E-Lit Creations

The electronic literature community has developed many online publications (‘zines and similar resources) that feature Web-based technologies and have typically taken the form of websites. The ELO seeks to encourage the creation of new spaces (‘zines) in which to curate, promote, and explore a greatly expanded set of works on popular social media spaces online. These might include video sharing sites, mobile platforms, or social media networks. The goal of our initiative is to stimulate and support the creation and dissemination of quality electronic literature in a much greater variety of locations.

We are looking for proposals to create new recurrent publication spaces that:

  • Are designed as fully integrated venues in app ecosystems and/or social media platforms. These publication venues can have a web component, but the primary means of distribution should be through these platforms.
  • Consider the promotion of creative work a priority but are open for creative/scholarly combinations.
  • Follow community credentialing standards, such as editorial oversight, peer review, juries, etc.
  • Have a marketing and social media distribution plan to build up their audience.
  • Publish at least two “issues” per year.
  • Are team efforts with a clear work plan.
  • Have an estimate of monetary needs.
  • Have a sustainability plan that considers three aspects:
    • Financial: explains how they will generate revenue to sustain operations,
    • Organizational: has a plan for continuing beyond its founding publishers,
    • Preservation: has plans for maintaining publication in the long term, and documentation of ephemeral works.

Interested? Send us a 500 word proposal that addresses all the points above by November 1, 2020. If you have any questions or seek additional guidance, please contact ELO President Leonardo Flores (leo@eliterature.org).

The ELO is prepared to fund one or more proposals in 2020-21, which will receive up to $1,000 in startup funds to cover licensing and developer fees, graphic design, software infrastructure, marketing, programming, etc. We can also help the team(s) with recruiting efforts, disseminating calls, and promoting it through our communication channels.

The winning team(s) will run the publication and prepare a report in which it shares its plans and processes, successes, lessons learned, and other insights from creating and running the publication. This report is to be presented in the ELO 2022 Conference.

ELO Board members are not eligible to apply to this initiative.

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Call for Proposals for ELO 2021 Conference

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) seeks proposals to host the ELO 2021 Conference and Festival.

Given the uncertainty surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic the ELO wishes to protect its community by planning its 2021 conference as an online conference and festival. We recognize the importance of maintaining the tradition of an event that brings together scholars, artists, and people interested in digital language arts from around the world. This year, we had to pivot from a traditional conference to an online, virtual one, and are grateful for Anastasia Salter and her team’s resiliency.

For next year, we wish to consider proposals from individuals or teams that wish to host our conference and are designing it to be online from the outset. We are open to consider innovative proposals from individuals or teams from a single or several collaborating institutions that wish to host our conference and are designing it to be online from the outset. We are particularly interested in conferences hosted outside North America, possibly located in two distinct time zones, or teams interested in running one aspect of the conference, such as the academic presentations, the arts festival, or the social spaces. We are also interested in joint conferences with organizations whose interests overlap with ours, such as ACM Hypertext, SLSA, and others.

Interested parties should contact the ELO President, Leonardo Flores (leo@eliterature.org), for guidance on developing a proposal for the conference. We encourage sending a pre-proposal no later than August 31, 2020 to help develop it into a full proposal. The deadline for complete proposals is September 30, 2020. The Board of Directors will consider proposals and make a decision shortly thereafter.

Next year, we will reassess the state of the Covid-19 pandemic and decide if we continue with online conferences or return to a face-to-face modality in 2022. Those interested in hosting the 2022 conference (be it online or face-to-face) should also contact Leonardo Flores to discuss options.

Here’s a link to a downloadable PDF of the Call for Proposals.

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ELO Amplify Anti-Racism Fellowships (June 21)

In the spirit of protest, change, and justice, and in an attempt to further strengthen its EDI (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) framework, the Electronic Literature Organization invites applications for two dedicated Fellowships aimed to Amplify Anti-Racism: a creative and a scholarly one.

In line with its other five 2020/21 Fellowships, the two AAR Fellowships will be a one-year opportunity for early career applicants with strong interests in the area of anti-racist electronic literature and/or digital arts.

The creative Fellowship is intended for a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and Persons of Color) identifying digital creator whose work should aspire to use digital media in e-literary ways, but there is no technical skill requirement to apply. The successful applicant will receive mentorship and support. The scholarly Fellow will be undertaking activities in support of developing the ELO’s racially/ethnically inclusive and activist policies and projects. These may include, for example, identifying e-literature initiatives and creative works by BIPOC within ELO existing databases, curating the collection of works and criticism by BIPOC and/or related to racial justice and anti-racism, developing racially and ethnically diverse and inclusive ontologies for the ELO’s databases, and/or supporting the design and development of e-lit works promoting racial justice and anti-racism.

Both Fellowships will come with a $500 stipend and a one year ELO membership. The awardees will be announced during the virtual ELO conference in July.

One page letters of application, and short CV’s can be sent to the Fellowship committee chair, Astrid Ensslin (ensslin at ualberta.ca). Applicants for the creative Fellowship are further encouraged to include a portfolio link to samples of their work.

Deadline to apply: June 21st, 2020.

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Call for ELO Research Fellows 2020/21 (May 31)

Call for ELO Research Fellows 2020/21
Deadline: May 31st, 2020

The ELO is expanding its scholarly activity, creative, and curatorial practices with the appointment of six graduate and early career Research Fellows for the academic year 2020/21, each of whom will be awarded a $500 stipend along with a one year ELO membership. Awards will be announced during the virtual ELO conference in July. In the coming months, we’ll be welcoming applicants who will be working with established ELO scholars and practitioners on a variety of ELO projects, such as the Electronic Literature Directory (http://directory.eliterature.org), CELL (www.cellproject.net), The Digital Review (http://www.thedigitalreview.com), the electronic book review (https://electronicbookreview.com), and the ELO Repository (https://elo-repository.org).

One page letters of application, and short CV’s can be sent to the ELD project director, Astrid Ensslin (ensslin at ualberta.ca).

Deadline to apply: May 31st

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ELO Call for MLA abstracts

Call for Abstracts

We are calling for abstracts for a potential Special Session hosted by Electronic Literature Organization at the Modern Language Association’s convention to be held in Toronto from January 7-10, 2021.

Keeping in line with the convention theme, Persistence, the theme of this panel is “Persisting Literatures.” We are looking for abstracts, 250-words in length, for presentations that explore ways in which digital literary scholars and artists work to keep writing accessible to the public. Topics can include but are not limited to: preservation, taxonomies, software deprecation and upgrades, changing platforms, hardware challenges, archival practices, translation, economic resiliency, racial inequality, and environmental crisis.

Send proposals by March 20, 2020 to Dr. Dene Grigar, Washington State University Vancouver, dgrigar[at]wsu.edu.

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ELC4 Deadline Extended (April 19)

EXTENSION:
New deadline April 19

The submission page is here.

We are extending the deadline for submissions to the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 4 to April 19th. We appreciate that the impact of COVID-19 as an international health emergency may prevent potential submissions from parts of the world affected, and so are extending the deadline to mid-April. If you have already submitted, you will have an option to revise or update your submission, and if you have not yet submitted, and have any issues with the submission process, including the video documentation, please reach out to us.

Video Documentation:

We have received a number of questions relating to the video documentation requirement, and so would like to provide some clarification. The file size limit is 100MB. Our recommendation is to record the work in a resolution no greater than 1200×768, and to use a codec based on the nature of the graphics in the work. We ask that you document at least a single traversal of the work if it is multicursal. This is so that we can make a decision on the work’s availability to future scholars and teachers in the case that the original platform is no longer viable. For some works, a traversal does not make sense, and so we are looking for documentation of the core features and essence of the work and its contributions. For a VR work, this could include a recording of a session, though it is important such sessions are long enough to represent the work and not simply function as a trailer for the work.

We are grateful to everyone who has submitted and who plan to submit, and hope that everyone is able to take appropriate measures during this pandemic.

ELC4 Electorial Collective

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ELC 4: Call for Submissions

Call for Submissions

Electronic Literature Collection Volume 4
Accepting submissions: 17 December 2019 – 15 March 2020
pdf version

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) seeks submissions for Volume 4 of the Electronic Literature Collection.

From Twine games to “physical” literature, remixes to hypertext, kinetic poetry to ARGs and Twitter bots, all types of digital literary submissions are welcome. Electronic literature (or e-lit) thrives at the intersection of digital media and textuality. The ELO offers a broad definition of e-lit as “works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer” (https://eliterature.org/pad/elp.html). Examples of the range of writing previously collected in Volumes 1, 2 and 3 are available at http://collection.eliterature.org.

Please visit the ELC4 site for instructions on how to submit.

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Call for Nominations for ELC 4 Editors

ELO has put out the call for self-nominations for editors for the fourth Electronic Literature Collection.  See the full call below and consider answering it, so you can help shape the next volume of this key resource of digital literature.

Qualifications

Nominees must have a PhD or terminal degree (such as an MFA) or a substantive body of elit work to be considered. To avoid conflicts of interest, Editorial Collective members cannot have any of their own work published in the volume they are editing.

Duties

  • working well in a team of 4 editors,
  • assembling and working with a team of international consultants,
  • providing progress reports to the ELO Board,
  • drafting and circulating a call for submissions,
  • developing and applying criteria for selection,
  • being available to travel to one (potentially two) editorial retreats at a location convenient to the editorial collective, funded by the ELO Board,
  • maintaining timely and collegial communications with authors,
  • working with the ELO technical team in publishing the ELC4 in the ELO servers,
  • designing, producing, & publishing the ELC4 on the Web (potentially a physical edition) by June 2021,
  • being available to fine-tune technical and editorial issues with the ELC4 for a year after publication,
  • helping launch and promote the ELC4 once published, and
  • participating in other activities needed to produce and promote the ELC4.

Proposed Timeline

  • September to December 2019: Develop work plan, assemble international consultant team, draft and launch Call for Submissions, receive and close Call for Submissions.
  • January to December 2020: Evaluate and select submissions, have editorial retreat, select and notify authors of decision, begin drafting editorial introductions and designing ELC4, communicate with authors to prepare works for publication and receive source files, prepare image and video documentation, begin production of ELC4.
  • January to June 2021: Editorial retreat (if budget allows), finalize production of ELC4, publish to the Web, produce physical edition, launch ELC4.

Budget

The ELO will provide funding for an Editorial Retreat (or two, if fundraising allows) and for production costs, as needed. The ELO Board of Directors will carry out fundraising activities to support the ELC4. ELC4 Editors will not receive any kind of financial remuneration for their work. The ELC4 Editorial Collective will consist of Dr. Rui Torres, who will lead the team, serve as editor and Board liaison, and three editors chosen by the Board.

Nomination Process

This call will be open until August 15, 2019. The Board of Directors will meet in September to discuss the pool of candidates and assemble a 4-member Editorial Collective charged with producing the ELC4. For nominations, please visit: https://eliterature.org/elc4/. 

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Call for ELO Research Fellows (April 1)

The ELO is currently expanding its scholarly activity and curatorial operations with the appointment of five graduate and early career Research Fellows, each of whom will be awarded a $500 stipend along with a one year ELO membership. Awards will be announced at the yearly banquet. In the coming months, we’ll be welcoming scholars who will draft entries for the Electronic Literature Directory, with a particular emphasis on works in the archives newly acquired by the ELO and also on works listed at our network of affiliated databases (www.cellproject.net). We are also open to descriptions of works that the Fellows have discovered in the course of their research, and in databases with which the Fellows themselves are affiliated. In particular, we look forward to filling out our new ELD category of “Glossary” entries, which will be gathered into a digital Thesaurus of Electronic Literary Terms.  Because entries are being gathered across our CELL member databases,  we are interested in appointing one Fellow who can help in implementing metadata standards and linked open data for the Thesaurus and Cell project.

One page letters of application, and short cv’s can be sent to the ELD project director, Joseph Tabbi (jtabbi@gmail.com).

Deadline: April 1