Scott Rettberg on Electronic Literature: Threads of Practice and Literary Genre in Digital Writing

On Thursday, December 5, 2019 at 3:30 p.m. in the Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab at the Rockefeller Library, Scott Rettburg, Professor of Digital Culture in the department of linguistic, literary, and aesthetic studies at the University of Bergen, Norway, will give a talk entitled, “Electronic Literature: Threads of Practice and Literary Genre in Digital Writing.” The talk is free and open to the public.   Electronic Literature In the talk, Professor Rettberg will discuss his new book, Electronic Literature, in which he places the most significant genres of electronic literature in historical, technological, and cultural contexts. These include combinatory poetics, hypertext fiction, interactive fiction (and other game-based digital literary work), kinetic and interactive poetry, and networked writing based on our collective experience of the Internet. He argues that electronic literature demands to be read both through the lens of experimental literary practices dating back to the early twentieth century and through the specificities of the technology and software used to produce the work. Rettberg will give a brief presentation of the methods and themes of the book, which will be followed by a discussion between Rettberg and Cayley.   Scott Rettberg Scott Rettberg is Professor of Digital Culture in the department of linguistic, literary, and aesthetic studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. Rettberg is the author or coauthor of novel-length works of electronic literature, combinatory poetry, and films including The Unknown, Kind of Blue, Implementation, Frequency, The Catastrophe Trilogy, Three Rails Live, Toxi•City, Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project and others. His creative work has been exhibited both online and at art...