Jill Walker Rettberg’s Visualizing Networks of Electronic Literature maps the fragmentary and dynamic field of electronic literature by analyzing citations in 44 doctoral dissertations published between 2002 and 2013. Applying “distant reading” strategies to the ELMCIP Knowledge Base, Rettberg identifies key works in the field, shifting genres, and changing approaches to scholarship.
(Source: abstract article)
This paper takes a digital hermeneutic approach (Van Nuenen and Van de Ven) to database research in the field of electronic literature. I analyze the ELMCIP Knowledge Base (KB), a publicly available cross-referenced database of electronic literature that allows contributors to enter and edit information. I consider the peripheries of the database from the perspective of the development, population, and research use of information in the KB.
As developers, we consider it essential to have fields for information that will document e-lit practices and their authors that are as accurate as possible without adding superfluous or problematic information or making the records too complicated to fill out. This can lead to sensitive issues: I recount a current discussion of the use of the gender field in the author records of the KB, combining the community discussion in the ELMCIP/ELO Facebook groups with sources from library science and radical cataloging (i.e. Drabinkski 2014).
The development of the KB is inextricably linked with the electronic literature community, laying bare issues of having community that is inclusive but which nevertheless inevitably has people at its center and in the peripheries. The KB can be regarded as both a service to the community and as an obligation for the community, which is a principal consideration because of its crowdsourced system. I take the perspective of digital labor (i.e. Terranova 2013) to give insight into the processes involved in the maintenance of the KB, within broader academic and economic structures.
Finally, as a result of the development and crowdsourced population of the KB, there are many anomalies in the KB. Completion of documenting the entire field of electronic literature systematically is a tantalizing goal that we know we are never going to reach but nevertheless we feel like we almost have because of the sheer amount of information in the database. The KB has been used in several quantitative papers (i.e. Rettberg 2013) as well as numerous student projects. I reflect on the implications for the structure and practices of the KB for doing quantitative research, by paying special attention to ‘outliers’ in the datasets.
Through these three reflections, I argue for a digital hermeneutic approach to database research which oscillates between analyzing the textual and contextual levels of database practices, between individual and collective. Analyzing the peripheries of the database in this manner uncovers the mutual dependence between the database and its community in both critical and prolific ways.
(Abstract in programme)
Digital Humanities in Practice: Project Work on Developing a Scholarly Database of Electronic Literature
Students work with scholars on a current international research project "Electronic Literature as a Model for Creativity in Practice" (ELMCIP) in particular working on the development and editing of the Knowledge Base for Electronic Literature. The Knowledge Base is a scholarly, relational database programmed in Drupal that documents works, events and actors in the field of electronic literature. In addition to participating in practical project-based work with an established team of senior and junior researchers, students read scholarship on digital humanities as a field and explore and read articles related to the digital humanities.
In individual projects, students develop expertise in a particular field of research in e-lit. In that respect, the course offers students ways to create interpretative frameworks for a specific set of data and trains students in adapting "digital methods" critically.
To be agreed upon with individual students skillsets and interests, practices in the course include:
After completing the course, students will have assessed the usefulness of a range of digital humanities strategies in specific scholarly work, have experience in discussing organizational and design choices in developing a scholarly database, and have investigated in the community of electronic literature.
Note: The complete reading list appears in the attached syllabus.
Digital Humanities in Practice: Project Work on Developing a Scholarly Database of Electronic Literature
Students work with scholars on a current international research project "Electronic Literature as a Model for Creativity in Practice" (ELMCIP) in particular working on the development and editing of the Knowledge Base for Electronic Literature. The Knowledge Base is a scholarly, relational database programmed in Drupal that documents works, events and actors in the field of electronic literature. In addition to participating in practical project-based work with an established team of senior and junior researchers, students read scholarship on digital humanities as a field and explore and read articles related to the digital humanities.
In individual projects, students develop expertise in a particular field of research in e-lit. In that respect, the course offers students ways to create interpretative frameworks for a specific set of data and trains students in adapting "digital methods" critically. To be agreed upon with individual students skillsets and interests, practices in the course include:
After completing the course, students will have assessed the usefulness of a range of digital humanities strategies in specific scholarly work, have experience in discussing organizational and design choices in developing a scholarly database, and have investigated in the community of electronic literature.
Note: The complete reading list appears in the attached syllabus.
In this groundbreaking book, Franco Moretti argues that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. In place of the traditionally selective literary canon of a few hundred texts, Moretti offers charts, maps and time lines, developing the idea of “distant reading” into a full-blown experiment in literary historiography, in which the canon disappears into the larger literary system. Charting entire genres—the epistolary, the gothic, and the historical novel—as well as the literary output of countries such as Japan, Italy, Spain, and Nigeria, he shows how literary history looks significantly different from what is commonly supposed and how the concept of aesthetic form can be radically redefined.
(Source: Verso online catalog.)