Year: 2006

Particularly promising-sounding jobs for electronic literature authors have just been posted by Georgia Tech (review begins October 15) and UC Davis (review begins November 15).

From the GA Tech announcement:

Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Communication, and Culture (LCC) is seeking to fill 2-3 positions at the rank of Assistant Professor in the emerging discipline of Digital Media. We seek practitioner/theorists who combine technical expertise with a strong grounding in the arts and humanities. Candidates should be prepared to teach at the undergraduate and graduate level in LCC’s suite of programs in computational and digital media. A Ph.D. or terminal degree in an appropriate field is required, as is computational proficiency and a demonstrated capacity for significant original research/creative work. […]

Interactive Narrative: Practitioner/theorist of computational expression, with an emphasis on procedural approaches to interactive narrative in various media forms such as virtual/mixed reality, games, and interactive television. Specialties could include one or more of the following: interactive fiction, computational story systems, computational poetry, narrative and cognition, story generation, interactive documentary, narrative intelligence, and AI.

Applicants should send a letter with a statement of research interests and pedagogical approach, a CV, one or two pages of screenshots, and/or a pointer to an on-line portfolio. Applications should be addressed to Chair, Search Committee, LCC, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0165.

From the UC Davis announcement:

The Program in Technocultural Studies of the University of California at Davis has a tenure-track or tenured Open-Rank Professor position available for a faculty member with expertise in media arts practice, preferably to teach in both studies and production, starting in Fall 2007. […]

We are looking for a media artist who can take a critical and creative approach to contemporary culture, technology and the arts, and who possesses a history or demonstrated potential for the high standard of achievement appropriate to employment in a tier-one research university in at least two of the following screen-based areas: interactivity, net, animation, programming, or performed media such as live video. Single-channel film/video makers and scholars are encouraged to apply if they also possess accomplishments in one of these areas. An MA or MFA is required; a PhD. is preferred. Teaching at undergraduate or graduate university levels or equivalent professional practice is required; the ability to teach both studies and production courses is preferred.

Please post (no email applications accepted) a letter of application, curriculum vitae, examples of work, by November 15, 2006, to: Associate Professor Bob Ostertag, Search Committee, Chair Digital Arts Position, Program in Technocultural Studies, One Shields Avenue, University of California, Davis CA 95616-8528. Referees will be will be contacted only for those short-listed candidates invited for campus visits: please include names, street addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, of four people from whom letters of reference may be requested. If materials are to be returned, a self-addressed stamped envelope. For further information, phone 530/752-0573 or check website at http://technoculture.ucdavis.edu

Edward Picot has provided a review of Broken Saints, by Brooke Burgess, Andrew West, and Ian Kirby. Broken Saints is an epic 24-part 12-hour-long Flash-animated comic book, which has been visited on the Web by more than five million people, and has sold almost 10,000 copies on DVD. A new DVD version, distributed by Fox, is published this month. The review appears on The Hyperliterature Exchange for August 2006.

Picot says this about Broken Saints: “Senecan tragedy is a useful point of reference for Broken Saints because it shares the same preoccupation with bloody violence, particularly violence within the family. At the end of Broken Saints a deranged father pulls out one of his daughter’s eyes, wires up her brain to the Internet and hangs her on a crucifix made out of computer monitors as part of his attempt to achieve world-domination: a climax so lurid and grotesque that even Seneca might have found it hard to outdo.” To read the whole review, go to http://hyperex.co.uk/reviewbrokensaints.php . The Hyperliterature Exchange is an online directory and review of new media literature for sale on the Web. More than 120 works are now listed. Please visit and browse at http://hyperex.co.uk.

ELO member Shelley Jackson, author of “Skin,” and The Melancholy of Anatomy, has published her first novel, Half Life. The novel tells the story of Nora and Blanche, “a two headed woman in a world where conjoined twins have their own subculture, slang, and self-help books.” When Nora decides to pursue a service called “The Divorce” in an effort “to take back her birthright: the first person pronoun,” only one person stands in her way: Blanche.
For more information on Half Life, visit http://www.ineradicablestain.com/half_life.html

Professor Neil Fraistat has been appointed as Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) beginning July 1, 2006. Fraistat is a Professor in the Department of English specializing in the Romantic era, textual scholarship, and digital studies. A recipient of the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Keats-Shelley Association and the Fredson Bowers Memorial Prize from the Society for Textual Scholarship, Fraistat is well known internationally for his scholarly editions of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry and for his work as co-founder and co-general editor ofRomantic Circles , an award-winning scholarly Website, now celebrating its tenth anniversary, that is published by the University of Maryland and devoted to the study of Romantic-period literature and culture.

Beyond his work on Romantic Circles, Fraistat has been an active and highly visible presence in the field of Digital Humanities, creating electronic resources, publishing on such topics as electronic editing, MOOs, and computer gaming; giving talks and running numerous sessions at major conferences; and sitting on the advisory board of several major electronic projects and journals, including Literary and Linguistic Computing, the premier journal in the field. He has just begun a second five-year term on the Executive Council of the Association for Computers and the Humanities, the field’s key professional organization. Neil has also served on an impressively large number of committees at every level within the university. He has been associated with the Dean’s Task Force on New Technologies and the Humanities (1993), with ARHU’s Committee on New Technologies, 1994-1996, and 2002-2004 (as Chair), and with MITH as both Chair of its Internal Advisory Board (1999-2005) and as Acting Director this past year.

Since its founding in 1999 through a major Challenge Grant from the NEH and under the directorship of Martha Nell Smith, MITH has become one of the most dynamic and exciting units on campus, as well as one of the most renowned institutes of its kind in the world. The coming year provides an auspicious start to Fraistat’s tenure: MITH will become the new headquarters of the Electronic Literature Organization, the premier professional organization for scholars and authors of born digital literature; it will add as Resident Fellows Merle Collins and Angel David Nieves, both working on fascinating multimedia archives involving African culture and history; and it will have as its new Networked Fellow the acclaimed hypertext fiction writer and conceptual artist, Shelley Jackson, who will be working on Skin: A Mortal Work of Art.