higher education

Alan Liu responds to reviews of The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information by N. Katherine Hayles and Johanna Drucker, both of whom admire Liu's book but believe that it exaggerates the influence of corporate knowledge work while providing an inadequate response to its destructive ahistoricism. Liu proposes that the digital age needs "new-media platforms of humanistic instruction" to supplement critical and theoretical humanistic approaches to help students understand how the human concerns and impulses that give rise to new media productions relate to knoweldge work.

 Countering Andrew Gallix's suggestion in a Guardian blog essay, "Is e-literature just one big anti-climax," that electronic literature is finished, Dene Grigar proposes that it may not be e-lit, but rather the institution of humanities teaching, that is in a state of crisis. And e-lit, she proposes, could be well placed to revive the teaching of literature in schools and universities.

The title of Grigar's essay was adapted by the Electronic Literature Organization 2012 Conference Planning Committee in its call for proposals.

Commentary on the "Electronic Literature in the University Panel" at the 2002 Electronic Literature Symposium: State of the Arts, organized by the Electronic Literature Organization and hosted by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) . Larry McCaffery moderated the panel, which featured Loss Pequeño Glazier, Alan Liu, Sue Thomas, and Victoria Vesna. Panelists discussed challenges facing academics trying to integrate electronic literature within existing arts and humanities programs, where electronic literature was most likely to find institutional support within university systems, the need for accessible, well-designed digital archives, and the dangers that interdisciplinary e-lit scholars might encounter.