Lesson plan

This is the final project guidelines for an undergraduate course in Electronic Literature. Originally the project asked students to adapt a fairytale into Twine, but as the pandemic hit in Spring 2020, the guidelines expanded so that students had the option of making an interactive story about their experience during the pandemic.

The timing of this exercise is a two hours session in the computer room of the university. It can also be an e-learning or blended learning activity. In that case the student would follow the process of the activity by reading the instructions published on the Virtual Campus of the university and having an online communication with the instructor. In the first place the teacher would briefly explain what is electronic literature and which are the main genres in Hispanic Electronic Literature:
1. La narrativa hipertextual
Subgenres: A) Escritura colaborativa B) Narrativa hipermedia
2. La ciberpoesía
3. El ciberdrama

In the second place the website of Literatura Electrónica Hispánica would be visited: http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/bib/portal/literaturaelectronica/presen…

In the practical part of the session students are invited to analyze and criticize a Spanish literary work about young and social issues which students can find interesting. The sections of the critical analysis are:

1) Read/Watch one of the following works:
El diario del niño burbuja de Belén Gache
Wordtoys de Belén Gache
Heartbeat de Dora García
Pinzas de metal de Tina Escaja
2) Make a Power Point indicating:
Genre: narración hipertextual interactiva, hipermedia or blog novela
3) Write what electronic literature provides that the printed cannot
4) Analyze the elements: characters, speaker, conflict, style, tone, background and themes

To conclude the student sends his project to the professor by the university virtual platform

A lesson plan where students work in groups to generate concepts for net.art projects and then analyse them using the taxonomy in Aarseth's Cybertext.

An exploration of the material poetics and certain (transcultural) practices of writing, beginning 'West' and moving 'East,' wherever 'to write' always means something radically different 'here' and 'now' or 'there' and 'then.' We will engage with, amongst others, work by: Steve McCaffery, Joan Retallack, Caroline Bergvall, TNWK (material poetics & performance); John Welch & Ian Sinclair (out walking); John Hall (domestic grammars); Oskar Pastior & Harry Mathews (self-referential machinery); Alan Sondheim (bad code read/writing in Life 2.x); Alec Finlay (shared writing in the open air); Wang Wei (regulated verse/painting); Wang Xizhi (prefaces, parties, & calligraphic afterparties); Xu Bing (hallucinations of world writing); with theorist/critics: Foucault; Fenollosa; Kittler; Derrida; Lessig.

Explore the material poetics of writing, 'West' and 'East.' Even within our own - Eurocentric - culture, writing is embodied and practiced in many different ways. There are familiar, predominant, and authoritative forms of writing and publication, both expository and creative. There are popular, marginal, avant-garde, and newly mediated practices which may be social, political, literary, and so on, and which may fashion language into forms and performances that exceed both convention and critical expectation. How can language, embodied in unfamiliar forms, become significant, affective, or perhaps even powerfully effective? We will try to answer this and related questions through readings and discussions of criticism, theory, and literary work. We will examine the poetics of what I am calling writing's material differences: what language is as substance and system. We will also, importantly, seek a transcultural perspective on embodied creative writing, since I will introduce practices - including both poetics and calligraphy as a writing practice - in the Chinese culture-sphere, the only other 'place' on the planet where writing in a radically different way supports a fully-formed and distinct civilisation.

(Source: Lesson Plan)

COURSE DESCRIPTIONWhat happens to literature and its study when text moves from page to screen? This course examines works of digital literature (literature created on the computer to be read on the computer) to understand how this emergent literary form affects the way we read, study, and understand literature. The course situates digital literature within literary history, examining connections to print hypertextual narrative, concrete poetry, OULIPO constraint-driven experiments, and other lineages. However, we also consider digital literature as a new form whose art “object” possesses computer-driven aesthetics— such as speed, animation, and multimodal semiotics— that produce decisively different literary effects and reading practices.

We will examine a varied collection of digital literature and genres including hypertext, interactive fiction, and kinetic poetry by such writers as Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries, Erik Loyer, Jason Nelson, and Judd Morrissey. Our study will be bolstered by readings in theory and criticism by Katherine Hayles, Janet Murray, Lev Manovich, and others. Moving between creative and critical works in print and digital formats, we will strive to understand the state of this new literary field and its relation to print literature and traditional methods of literary study.

What happens to literature and its study when text moves from page to screen? This course examines works of digital literature (literature created on the computer to be read on the computer) to understand how this emergent literary form affects the way we read, study, and understand literature. The course situates digital literature within literary history, examining connections to print hypertextual narrative, concrete poetry, OULIPO constraint-driven experiments, and other lineages. However, we also consider digital literature as a new form whose art “object” possesses computer-driven aesthetics— such as speed, animation, and multimodal semiotics— that produce decisively different literary effects and reading practices.

We will examine a varied collection of digital literature and genres including hypertext, interactive fiction, and kinetic poetry by such writers as Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries, Erik Loyer, Nick Montfort, and Judd Morrissey. Our study will be bolstered by readings in theory and criticism by Katherine Hayles, Lev Manovich, and others. Moving between creative and critical works in print and digital formats, we will strive to understand the state of this new literary field and its relation to print literature and traditional methods of literary study.

Since this a course on digital literature wherein we will practice media-specific analysis, this website is a space for the extension of our classroom dialogue. Students will share critical responses in digital form in individual blogspaces connected to this main space. This blog component is meant to be a space for students to explore ideas, collect notes, present assignments, and extend the boundaries of our seminar.

This course is taught by Jessica Pressman (Assistant Professor of English).