CFP

Webinar on E-literature organised by the Dept. of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi to be held from 16- 17 January, 2023

We invite artists, independent scholars, Ph.D researchers, academicians and practitioners to submit original research papers, case studies and media artefacts for the webinar on E-lit organised by the Dept. of English, Jamia Millia Islamia.

E-LITERATURE: EXPLORATIONS IN LITERARY CREATIVITY

Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines literature as “writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest”. The earliest literary narratives of mankind originated in the oral mode and with the advancement of civilization literary activities progressed to the written form like hieroglyphs on wood and papyrus scrolls, palm leaf manuscripts, inscriptions on stone and clay and eventually on paper. Humanity moved a giant step forward with the invention of the printing machine in the 15th century. Publishing literary works became cheaper and became accessible to a wider reading public. In the later part of the 20th century the oft-quoted view was the demise of the print legacy and the resultant dwindling readers’ interest in the literary narrative. Surprisingly, “reading” has re-emerged as a very important pastime/activity in contemporary times albeit through the electronic medium. The expansion of the World Wide Web has given the literary artist a wide and diverse platform from which to publish their work. The pioneering literary works through the electronic medium emerged between 1952 to 1995 and most of the practitioners were not even aware that they were creating e-literature. The internet revolution and the development of faster word processors, expansion of personal computers and gaming consoles from the 1980s onwards brought about a paradigm shift in the production and circulation of literature. Later, more versatile software such as HyperCard, Storyspace, and INFORM along with increasingly powerful media editing and production tools emerged in the 1980s and 1990s.

          The primary identifier of E-literature is that they are “born-digital” and not merely texts that has been scanned or typed out in a digital format. Within the field there is an emphasis on experimentation. For example, Alan Bigelow’s How to Rob a Bank reinvents Bonnie and Clyde for the digital age. Users can swipe the touchscreen on a smart phone or hit the space bar to reveal a narrative told through iPhone web searches, text messages, and app activities; digital poet Benjamin Laird wrote ‘Core Values’ in response to Dorothea Mackellar’s classic Australian poem ‘My Country’ which was displayed in a three-dimensional box viewed in-browser or using a virtual reality headset. Montre’al based David Jhave Johnston produced ReRites using artificial intelligence trained to imitate contemporary poetry. Piotr Marecki’s Cenzobot is a twitter “bot” that tweets fragments from real Polish censors’ reviews of publications from the communist era. J.R. Carpenter’s The Gathering Cloud is composed as a pared down version of Luke Howard’s 1803 ‘Essay on the Modifications of Clouds’ with hypertext links and the poetry is accompanied by animation of animals which bridge the link between clouds in the sky and “cloud” computing. In the words of Nasrullah Mambrol, ‘electronic literature is not just a “thing” or a “medium” or even a body of “works” in various “genres”. It is not poetry, fiction, hypertext, gaming, codework, or some new admixture of all these practices. Electronic literature is, arguably, an emerging cultural form, as much a collective creation of terms, keywords, genres, structures, and institutions as it is the production of new literary objects.’ E-literature demands a new paradigm of reading which includes the lens of experimental literary practices and also the specificities of the technology and software used to produce the work.

         The aim of this webinar is to deliberate on the problematization of literary and theoretical canons by E-lit, the practice of intertextuality and interdisciplinarity, the social and cultural parameters of literary production, the practical approaches to teaching digital literature and the emergence of this form in the developing world.

Possible topics include but are not limited to the following webinar tracks:

• Intermediality and E-lit
• Digital Young Adult Literature
• E-lit and publishing models
• Literary and theoretical postulations of E-lit
• E-lit as Digital Humanities.
• Alrchive and UXpoetry
• E-lit and its educative and collaborative practices
• Polysemy and Synaesthesia in E-lit
• Emerging E-lit practices in South Asia

Please submit abstracts of 350 words and a short bio of 100 words to

abstractseliteratureenglishjmi@gmail.com by 30th Nov. 2022. Acceptance of abstracts will be notified from 5th Dec. 2022 onwards. Presenters will have 15-20 minutes to present their work.

 Registration Link:   https://forms.gle/nvrFGYGp8CcHGJxS9

 No Registration fees needed. Website:   https://eliteraturejmi.wordpress.com/2022/11/10/webinar-on-e-literature/ 

Selected paper presenters will receive through email the online meet link 1 week before the event.

Contact Details:

Prof. Simi Malhotra (HOD)

Mob: 9818038281

Email: smalhotra@jmi.ac.in

Dr. Shimi Moni Doley (Convenor)

Mob: 9899028752

Email: sdoley@jmi.ac.in

Dr. Sumaiyah Naaz

Mob: 9897268766

Email: sumaiyahnaaz@gmail.com

Dr. Shazia Salam

Mob: 9899571218

Email: shaziasalam00@gmail.com