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.