Announcing an important national grant that will help scholars explore and archive early electronic literature:
The U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded the Electronic Literature Organization a Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant amounting to $52,003 for an innovative historical effort involving the first generation of modern digital writing.
The Pathfinders project, proposed by ELO President-elect Dene Grigar of Washington State University Vancouver, and Board Member Stuart Moulthrop of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, will build an archive of readings in which the authors and volunteer readers explore the textual possibilities of early digital texts. Readings will be carried out on the early computer systems for which the works were originally intended.
Recorded sessions will be made available through the Electronic Literature Database, and will also form the basis for multimedia presentations developed by the investigators and other colleagues. Using innovative software such as Scalar, these publications will explore strategies for representing and preserving computer-mediated writing.
Among the works chosen for the project are Judy Malloy’s Uncle Roger: The Blue Notebook (1986), John McDaid’s Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse (1994), and Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl (1995). Plans are underway to expand to other key titles from the 1980s and 90s.
Sponsored by the Electronic Literature Organization, the research will take place in the E-Lit Laboratory of Washington State University, Vancouver. The project begins in the spring of 2013 and will conclude in late 2015.
Members should remember that ELO can be used as a sponsoring organization on many different kinds of grants. Contact us for more information.