Astrid Ensslin is Professor in Digital Humanities and Game Studies at the University of Alberta. She has a PhD (s.c.l.) from Heidelberg University, and previously held academic and managerial faculty, research, and teaching positions at the Universities of Wales (Bangor), Manchester, and Leeds. Her main publications include Literary Gaming (MIT Press 2014), Analyzing Digital Fiction (Routledge, 2013),The Language of Gaming (Palgrave, 2011), Creating Second Lives: Community, Identity and Spatiality as Constructions of the Virtual (Routledge, 2011), Canonizing Hypertext: Explorations and Constructions (Bloomsbury, 2007), and Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies (Bloomsbury, 2007). She is Principal Editor of the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds and has led various government and charity funded projects, for example on researching and teaching videogames across cultures; empirical digital fiction reader-response research and curating digital fictions for broad audiences (AHRC “Reading Digital Fiction” project), analyzing digital fictions (Leverhulme Digital Fiction International Network), specialized language corpora, and training graduate students in digital humanities tools and methods.
CALL FOR PAPERS – ELO 2018
CALL FOR PAPERS – ELO 2018
Mind the Gap!
Thinking Electronic Literature in a Digital Culture:
Explorations and Interventions
http://elo2018.org/
The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is pleased to announce its 2018 Conference and Festival, hosted by the Université du Québec à Montréal. The Conference, the Festival and Exhibits will be held August 13th to 17th in downtown Montréal, Québec, Canada. Mind the Gap! will be bilingual, with both English and French tracks, showcasing Montreal’s important and dynamic local Québécois e-lit/digital arts community and extending a special welcome to e-lit’s global francophonie.
The aim of this conference is to think about e-lit in a digital culture. What is its relationship to current cultural practices and trends? Two directions are proposed: explorations and interventions. The first direction features e-lit’s exploratory nature, its formal aspects, its use of technology, its renewal of narrative conventions, and at the same time its impact on literary theories and methodologies to renew themselves. The second direction considers e-lit’s place in the public sphere, its relationship to digital and urban culture, to forms of conservation and presentation, and also to performance.
TOPICS
Possible topics for presentations, performances and exhibits are:
Gaps in the field
Translation gaps: code, natural language, media
Narrative theory, temporal gaps and the imaginative space of the in-between
Understanding e-lit: towards digital methodologies and/or pedagogies
Mobile technologies’ effect on writing and reading habits
Perceptual gaps: AR, VR, and Linking Structures
Politics of e-lit: gaps between reception communities
Gaps and Bridges between e-lit and digital humanities
Gender gaps in e-lit
Spoken screens: the gap between performance and presence
Linguistic and cultural specificities to E-lit
Electronic literature and urban culture
Mind the gap! E-lit and humour
Gaps between datasets and interfaces
Archiving differences between libraries and museums
Exhibition differences: ephemeral and permanent installations
What is different about e-lit for children?
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
For the Conference (peer-reviewed):
Paper (15 min – a presentation of a single paper by one or more authors – 500 word abstract).
Lightning talk (5 min – a short paper for a focused presentation – 250 word abstract).
Poster (1 page poster). n.b. A poster can be combined with a lightning talk.
Panel (90 min – a proposal for a complete panel including 3 or 4 separate papers on the same general topic – 250 word overview plus 500 word individual abstracts).
Pre-conference Workshop (Action sessions, focused on hands-on group work on a given project or topic – 500 word abstract).
For the Festival (peer-reviewed):
Performance and screening (10 min – readings, actions, interventions – 250 word abstract; provide links to images, videos, etc.)
Gallery exhibit (provide description of installation, as well as technical needs)
Submissions open: October 16th, 2017 to December 15th, 2017.
Acceptances sent out: January 30th, 2018.
You must attend the conference to appear on the program. You may submit as many proposals as you want, but participants may present a maximum of two pieces/papers.
Registration: Early registration will close April 30st, 2018. There will be a registration fee for the Conference (to be determined), which will include ELO Membership, invitations to all sessions of the Conference, the Festival, and the Exhibits. Lunch and coffee-breaks will be served. Conference banquet requires an additional fee.
The conference will be hosted by the University du Québec à Montréal, at the Berri-UQAM subway station. The campus is fully wheelchair accessible. ELO 2018 is committed to making its conference accessible and will provide a simple accessibility guide to all venues.
Some of the sessions will be streamed via the Conference website.
For more information, contact Bertrand Gervais, ELO 2018 Chair, elo2018mtl (at) gmail.com
Announcing the 2017 ELO Prize Winners
 Announcing International Awards in Electronic Literature:Â
The 2017 ELO Prize
— Porto Portugal
Literature is changing right in front of our eyes, and this year’s awards from the Electronic Literature Organization celebrate artists and scholars who are at the vanguard.
At the annual conference of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO), held this year in Porto, Portugal, President Dene Grigar announced the 2017 ELO Prize winners: Alan Bigelow, John Cayley, and David Jhave Johnston for transformative work in the field of digital literature.  Second place winners include MarÃa MencÃa, Mez Breeze and Andy Campbell, and shortlisted authors include Serge Bouchardon, JR Carpenter, Judy Malloy, Anastasia Salter.
Research Opportunities at the ELD
Announcing opportunities to contribute to one of ELO’s major projects is the Electronic Literature Directory (ELD). (http://directory.eliterature.org/)
The Electronic Literature Directory (ELD 2.0) is a collection of literary works, descriptions, and keywords. Both a repository of works and a critical companion to e-literature, the ELD hosts discussions that are capable of being referenced and revised over years of use, and the ELD feed directly into ELO’s larger CELL project (http://cellproject.net/).
The ELD is looking for 3 Associate Editors and for entries for the Electronic Literature Directory.
Why is contributing to the ELD so important?
You help expand the field of electronic literature.
You help other scholars and curators putting together classes and exhibits.
You help yourself by making your scholarship available in an open-access peer-reviewed platform opportunity.
Consider submitting entries to the ELD or applying for these positions.
Deadline for applications March 17, 2017
Apply and Submit via:Â eliterature.org at gmail.com.
MLA 2017 Readings & Performances
Join the Electronic Literature Organization for an evening of readings & performances during the Modern Language Association conference in Philadelphia, PA. The event takes place in the Connelly Auditorium (room 806) in the Terra Building at The University of the Arts, on January 5, 2017, from 8-10 p.m.
Dene Grigar and Jennifer Zaylea, Emcees
Performers and Works:
Sandy Baldwin & Gabriel Tremblay-Gaudette, “Poems you should knowâ€
Daniel Anderson, “A Blessing†and “The Red Wheelbarrowâ€
Kathi Inman Berens, “Abayaâ€
Helen Burgess, “Anna, Autopoieticâ€
Caitlin Fisher, “Pareidolia: the Doll Universeâ€
Riham Hosny, “Salome,†by Mohamed Abdelghani (Yuzerssif)
Anastasia Salter and Bridget Blodgett, “Alt-Right: Ctrl+A; Delâ€
Liz Losh, “While Chopping Red Peppers†and “The Last Day of Betty Nkomoâ€
Laura Zaylea,  â€Closer than Rustâ€
The ELO would like to thank our hosts at The University of the Arts, and in particular Jennifer Zaylea for organizing this event.
Launching ELC3
ELC3 2.0
We are pleased to announce the 2.0 version of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 3 (ELC3). This version adds preservation and new resources to the 114 featured works. Here are four new features that should be of special interest to our community.
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The works are now hosted in ELO servers (whenever possible), but we also link directly to their original websites to offer access to their authorial contexts. You can access both, as well as video documentation, through the Begin menu.
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Downloadable, editable source files and other materials provided by the authors are now included in a new section titled Downloads, beneath the Editorial Statements for each work. You can study these materials from a variety of critical or creative approaches or remix them to create your own.
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Twitter bots now have archives which allow you to browse, search, and read deeply into their output, from their launch up to January 2016. You can access them through the Begin menu or download them as spreadsheets in the Downloads section.
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A downloadable version of the ELC3 will soon be available for those who wish to install it in classrooms, labs, or have an offline copy.
We are still fundraising to offer a USB version free to ELO members, sponsors, and to distribute to libraries, museums, and archives. If you are interested in contributing to this free and open ELO initiative, contact us at elcvol3@gmail.com.
The Electronic Literature Collection is one of ELO’s many initiatives to promote and preserve digital literature. Â Your membership helps to fund these projects. Â Join or renew your membership today or increase your membership level to enable ELO to continue to increase and spread information about this innovative mode of art. Â https://eliterature.org/membership/
Share and enjoy!
The ELC3 Editorial Collective
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Stephanie Boluk
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Leonardo Flores
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Jacob Garbe
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Anastasia Salter
ELO at The Kitchen — NYC – Sept. 10
If you’re in NYC (or near enough to hop a train), join us for We Have Always Been Digital, at The Kitchen. ELO President Dene Grigar will be there with hard copies of ELC3 (announcement forthcoming) and previous collections for the first people to sign up as members.
Come for a night of e-lit wonderment and (re)join an international organization of artists and scholars in ELO!
http://www.thekitchen.org/event/electronic-literature-organization-we-have-always-been-digital
Announcement:
The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) presents performances of digitally-born writing and poetry. Curated by Illya Szilak, this afternoon of interactive presentations showcases a range of dynamic forms from bots and games to interactive online works, and offers audience members the chance to engage with works and authors after the performances.
Artists include: Abraham Avnisan, Amaranth Borsuk, John Cayley, David Clark, Caitlin Fisher, Ian Hatcher, Porpentine Charity Heartscape, Flourish Klink, Tan Lin, Nick Montfort, Kia Miakka Natisse, Allison Parrish, and others.
September 10, 1–6pm, FREE
512 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011
CFP ELO 17 (Dec 5; July 19-22, 2017)
ELO’17
Electronic Literature > Affiliations, Communities, Translations
Hosted by UFP – University Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal, July 19 – 22, 2017
http://conference.eliterature.org
Call For Papers & Works
The ELO (Electronic Literature Organization) is pleased to announce its 2017 Conference and Festival, to be held from July 19-22. The Conference is hosted by University Fernando Pessoa, Porto, and the Festival and Exhibits will be held in the center of the historic city of Porto, Portugal.
Titled «Electronic Literature: Affiliations, Communities, Translations», the Conference and Festival welcome dialogues and untold histories of electronic literature, providing a space for discussion about what exchanges, negotiations, and movements we can track in the field of electronic literature. These three threads will weave through the conference, structuring dialogue, debate, performances, presentations, and exhibits. The threads are meant as provocations, enabling constraints, and aim at forming a diagram of electronic literature today and expanding awareness of the history and diversity of the field.
The goal of this International Conference is to contribute to displacing and re-situating accepted views and histories of electronic literature, in order to construct a larger and more expansive field, to map discontinuous textual relations across histories and forms, and to create productive and poetic apparatuses from unexpected combinations. Each of the three strands – Affiliations, Communities, Translations – is described in detail below. Participants can apply to the Conference and Festival by locating their work within a strand. In all cases, we are open to experimental proposals that integrate theory and practice, and proposals that challenge presentation formats.
CFP: International Conference on Digital Media and Textuality (5 July; 3-5 Nov 2016)
CFP: International Conference on Digital Media and Textuality
3rd to 5th November 2016, Universität Bremen, Germany
Conference chair: Dr. Daniela Côrtes Maduro
Deadline for Submissions: 5 July 2016
Website: https://digmediatextuality.wordpress.com/
CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Carlos Reis, Director of the Centre for Portuguese Literature, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Dene Grigar, President of the Electronic Literature Organization, Washington State University Vancouver, USA
Joseph Tabbi, Electronic Book Review (EBR) Editor in Chief, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Manuel Portela, Director of the Materialities of Literature Program, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Maria Mencia, ELO Board of Directors, University of Kingston, United Kingdom
Scott Rettberg, ELMCIP project leader, University of Bergen, Norway
Read more CFP: International Conference on Digital Media and Textuality (5 July; 3-5 Nov 2016)
ELO 2016 Begins!
ELO 2016 at University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada
http://elo2016.com
#ELO16, #DHSI2016
Over 190 participants have arrived from around the world to Victoria, Canada for the 2016 international conference of the Electronic Literature Organization now underway, Â the largest ELO conference to date.
This year, the conference runs between two weeks of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI2016),  specifically its e-lit seminars. Participants of DHSI are encouraged to join the conference for the weekend or with a special discounted day-pass. This cohabitation of the events has led to one of the largest gatherings around electronic literature ever.
ELO 2016 offers a conference and a festival, featuring panels, workshops, artists talks, performances, screenings, sound installations, and an exhibition.  The conference is also showcasing the winners of the 4Humanities “Shout Out for the Humanities” contest.
Participants will have the opportunity to interact with artists and scholars, and discuss ELO itself at our town hall event. Also, during Saturday night’s banquet, the 2016 ELO Prize will be awarded, with the N. Katherine Hayles award given to a scholarly work and the Robert Coover Award going to a creative work produced in the past 18 months.
If you cannot join us in person, join us online at the website, on Twitter, or on Facebook. You can also hear artifacts from previous ELO events on radioELO. Â Whether here in Victoria or somewhere in cyberspace, you can feel the buzz of this weekend’s conference as literature becomes electrified.