In contrast to the first decade of literary production in the electronic media, when most critical attention was focused on link and node hypertext fiction and its relationship to postmodern theory, in recent years the field of new media studies has embraced a wider definition of Nelsonian “hypertext” to include a variety of forms of literary expression that branch or perform on request. A field once dominated by Storyspace fiction now includes in its purview a wide variety of approaches to literary expression made for the computer and the network, including kinetic poetry, interactive fiction, combinatory writing, story and poetry generation, and network-mediated memoir. During the talk I will present examples of recent work in electronic literature submitted to the forthcoming Electronic Literature Collection (of which MITH is a co-sponsor) in the context of genre.

Scott Rettberg is an Assistant Professor of New Media Studies in the Literature Program at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He is a co-founder and past president of the Electronic Literature Organization and a contributing blogger at GrandTextAuto: http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/ . A writer and practicioner as well as critic and scholar of new media, Scott is the author or co-author of the classic hypertext novel The Unknown, the email novel Kind of Blue, and the sticker novel Implementation.

12:30 in the MITH Conference Room.

Coming up @MITH (March 14): Johanna Drucker and Jerome McGann, Professors of English and Media Studies at the University of Virginia. This talk will be held in Susquehanna Hall, room 3105 at our usual 12:30 time.

View MITH’s complete Spring Speakers Schedule here.