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(Note: I should preface this bit of writing with a warning: what follows is a first attempt to set down some things I’ve been struggling to articulate for the past couple of years. As such, it may be slightly less than ideally coherent, but hopefully out of it some clarity will emerge.)
What is literature?
It’s remarkable how explosive three words can be. “I love you” and “this is war” win out in the big picture, to be sure, but among academic circles (particularly in the humanities) “what is literature” can be almost as provocative. When you start mucking about with anything so heated, it’s a good idea to start out with definition, or in this case, seven:
- writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays.
- the entire body of writings of a specific language, period, people, etc.: the literature of England.
- the writings dealing with a particular subject: the literature of ornithology.
- the profession of a writer or author.
- literary work or production.
- any kind of printed material, as circulars, leaflets, or handbills: literature describing company products.
- Archaic. polite learning; literary culture; appreciation of letters and books.
Note that the first four definitions all use variants of the word ‘writing’, definition six specifies printed materials, and definition seven explicitly uses the word books. (I find definition five to be absurdly insufficient: defining “literature” as “literary work or production” is like attempting to define “milk” as “milky work or production”.)
And yet, and yet – imagine the outrageous clamor that would ensue if a professor were to suggest that Shakespeare should be banned from the study of literature, despite the fact that Shakespeare’s works were not written to be read, but performed. In other words, Shakespeare’s creations were primarily performative, not textual.
Such an argument might go as follows:
Shakespeare shouldn’t be taught in literature classes, as his work was performative, not textual.
But clearly the strength of Shakespeare’s work is to be found in the poetry of his words. “To be or not to be”, “I will break my staff and drown my book” – these phrases have lasted for centuries due to the artfulness of their construction.
Have they? Reinterpretations of Shakespeare’s works have been around almost as long as the originals; such a reimagining as West Side Story is still recognizable as Romeo and Juliet, even though it deploys none of the same language.
Perhaps this is due to a second strength of Shakespeare, which is also considered a component of literary studies: the structures of storytelling, such as character creation and plot development. It stands to reason that if Shakespeare’s work were primarily performative, what should reach down through the ages are not the words and the structures but the actions, such as the dances Bob Fosse created for West Side Story, or the music by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. While both of these are considered exemplary, they do not fall under the definition of literary.
But why don’t they? Music and dance moves can be recorded as written marks such as musical notes or dance charts – why is literature constrained to works of the alphabet? If the definition is, as suggested earlier, “writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features”, and music and dance moves can both be written down, then clearly music and dance should be included in literary studies just the same as poetry, novels, history, biography or essays.
But they’re not narrative.
Nowhere in the above definitions does the word ‘narrative’ appear.
Perhaps it should?
Poetry is studied as literature, and it’s frequently not narrative. Besides, even if the word ‘narrative’ was included in such a definition, music, dance, film, comics and video games, robots, mobile devices or holographic television all can be used to tell stories.
But that’s not their primary purpose.
It could be argued that telling stories is not the primary purpose of language, either.
Yet still, when we use the word ‘literature’ it remains associated with text in our mind, with language.
Of the elements I listed, only dance feels like it doesn’t use language, and even then it’s possible to imagine a dance performance that incorporates text or language through music, spoken words, projected text or a libretto.
Perhaps the answer is to be found elsewhere, then. In his Literary Theory, Terry Eagleton suggests that the study of English literature only came about as a way to inject formative philosophies and ideals into the minds of each new generation. Mythologies, legends, folklore, and religions serve as the literature of a culture insofar as they transmit traditions. This partly justifies the creation of a canon that is to be studied, as opposed to arguing that any text is worthy of study.
While that may be true, it fails to explain why works such as Casablanca exist in both the cultural memory and the tradition of film studies, if not literature: it’s incredibly difficult to assign a particular moral value to Casablanca, but it does stand as an important work because of how it exemplifies a particular structure of creation. In the same way that The Searchers is worth experiencing as an example of the Western, or All Quiet on the Western Front stands as an exemplar of the war story.
Yet those do display “ideas of permanent and universal interest”, as they both deal with the human experience. Even John Wayne’s bastard of character in The Searchers can be instructive to audiences as to the dangers of the damaged.
But these are all films – should they be considered literature?
Perhaps, but a huge portion of their value is also to be found in how they demonstrate what can be done in a particular media form. Casablanca, The Searchers and All Quiet on the Western Front are all memorable for their performances and cinematography as much as they are for their dialogue, their characters or their narrative structures.
Which suggests that they should perhaps be studied in both Drama and Literature departments?
Oh, definitely.
But isn’t this too narrow, too exclusive? Shouldn’t even Literature students be made aware of the import of the performances and cinematography, if only to draw their attention to how important both factors might be?
Perhaps. But this suggests a need to examine what each media form brings to the table, so that anyone opting to write for a given form knows not only how to create great dialogue, characters and narrative structures, but also how to play to the strengths of a given form.
A comparative literature for media, then?
Perhaps.
But isn’t that just media studies?
It seems to me that just studying what each media form does well, or just studying the effects of media forms, might fall under the rubric of media studies. The notion of comparative media studies might also incorporate this, but under the understanding that the study of multiple media is to be pressed into the service of examining how stories are told, traditions are conveyed, and culture is created in the same fashion as our traditional notion of literature in each of the myriad forms of media being created, consumed and explored in the 21st century is simply an updating of the definition of studying literature.
So this reading of Comparative Media Studies might simply be considered modern Literature?
Perhaps.
That’s the conversation happening in my brain lately, which knits together my interests in English Literature, Film, Drama, Art, Literary Theory, Comparative Media Studies and the Media Lab’s upcoming Center for Future Storytelling. It also describes the lay of my mental landscape concerning my Ph.D. plans, my plans for future books and how I might someday structure interdisciplinary courses taught inside of a Literature department (or whatever exists in 2015 or whenever I actually become The Good Doctor Long). Thoughts?
Posted in Academia, Art, Books, Comics, Media, MIT, Movies, Music, Poetry, Publishing, Video Games, Writing
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January 19, 2009
11:44 pm
 This might seem like a small thing, but it’s actually indicative of a bigger thing. Tonight I changed the ‘Miscellany’ section of this site to Consulting and moved the “Presentations and Lectures” page into the Writing section. Longtime friends and clients will note that, unlike my old consulting site that is (at least for now) up at www.dreamsbay.com, my rudimentary Consulting page only includes a very small amount of information: my general background, my areas of expertise, and where to go to contact me.
The reason behind this change? Simply put, the Dreamsbay site doesn’t really reflect what I do when I consult anymore. Since I last updated that site (in 2004, yikes!) I’ve moved away from doing just websites and graphic design (although I do still do that, of course) and into more strategic development, especially in the areas of new media, the arts, education, interactive entertainment, and storytelling in general. You know, real Comparative Media Studies “applied humanities” type of stuff. (If CMS brands itself as “applied humanities”, is “applied CMS” redundant?) Essentially I took a page from my friends Derek and Adam and changed my shingle from a big, splashy brochureware site into a subtler section of this one: in addition to my writing, my design, my research and everything else, I’m also available for consulting. It says so now right up in the upper-right of every page. (The eagle-eyed among you will also note that I swapped the order of ‘Portfolio’ and ‘Writing’, since I’m hoping that 2009 will see a lot more writing coming down the pike.)
So, yes. My rates are affordable, my skills list and contacts list are both very extensive, and I’m happy to talk to people about their projects. This is an off-hours thing for me, which means I only have a very limited number of openings, but if you’d like to pick my brain please drop me a line!
January 17, 2009
10:36 am
Continuing in the same vein as before, I’ve now managed to the get Movable Type’s new Facebook Connect plugin up and running on this blog. If you’ve wanted to comment on something here but have been deterred in the past, give this a shot and see if it works for you!
I’ve also installed Shaun “sIFR” Inman‘s excellent Mint stats tracking software, which is something I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time now. The main catalyst for this was the lack of a top-notch iPhone app for Google Analytics, while Mint has a really excellent iPhone pepper that’s now sitting comfortably on the home screen of my phone. $30 for Mint is $30 more than Google Analytics, but now that I’ve got it up and running, I can honestly say the plug-in architecture, the iPhone pepper, and the sheer beauty of the interface make Mint definitely worth it.
- Cultural Studies sale. Oooh, the good stuff for cheap…
- Why magazines are useless. Courtesy of HarperStudio’s 26th Story.
- A monetized Twitter feed? Interesting concept.
- An introduction to genre theory. Thanks, Julie!
- Doug Seibold on indie publishing. Really intriguing piece from Slate.
- Fiction reading increases for adults. Now there’s something you don’t hear very often.
- Clay Shirky’s predictions for 2009. “2009 is going to be a bloodbath.” Great.
- American Gods and London literary novelists. Amen.
- Pratchett knighted. Sir Terrence of Pratchett! Huzzah!
- Weird Tales appreciates Gaiman. Hear, hear.
- How Boccaccio would survive the credit crunch. Debauchery!
- How Twitter will change blog design in ’09. On it, thanks.
- Tweetbacks? So it begins.
- Facebook vs. MySpace: the numbers. Mmm, chewy data.
- Steampunk dangerous to your health? Radioactive jewelry = HOT.
- Junot Diaz day? This is getting surreal.
- Goss & Barzak on “living life to the fullest.” Me, I’m supersaturated.
- 462 books in 365 days. I wonder if I could do that.
- Eric Idle on John Cleese’s writing style. Hysterical.
- The Atlantic on the end times of print. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
- London Review of Books on video games. Still parsing this one.
- Salon on Bittman. God, I love The Minimalist.
- Juggling work and writing. Well… Kinda.
- Kazu Kibuishi finishes Amulet 2. Woot!
- NYT: How to publish without perishing. “The book is like a hammer.”
- Geektastic! Damn, what a lineup!
- Powazek: Ignore the content. The new Clute-less Sci-Fi Wire still sucks.
- RIP Ricardo Montalban. Khaaaan!
- Scalzi goes through the Stargate. Eeeeeen-teresting.
- TYBF&H is no more. Damn, first Endicott and now this.
- Rise and fall of the metal airship. See above re: steampunk.
- Fortune: Iger rocks Disney. I’ve been impressed so far.
- GENREALITY. Watch this space.
- Getting started with Arduino. Things to tinker with someday #522.
- Kleptoplasty. I need to remember this for rewriting Green.
- Viable Paradise writer’s workshop. Damn, that could be fun.
- Y Kant Alice Read (Novels). I sympathize.
- Read it and weep. Man, this is getting depressing.
- Tachyon on slipstream, steampunk and Disch. “We’re all about niche publishing.”
- The curse/joy of academic interdisciplinarity. “Who’s the future?”
- Finding value in author websites. Like this one?
- Doctorow on writing in the age of distraction. Huh? What was that?
A number of intriguing calls for papers have come through my inbox lately, so I thought I’d post the most interesting-looking ones here. Anyone who reads this blog has to have somewhat similar interests…
SFF Critical Book on Doctor Who
The Unsilent Library: Adventures in New Doctor Who
Published by the Science Fiction Foundation
edited by Simon Bradshaw, Antony Keen, and Graham Sleight
The Science Fiction Foundation, which has published a number of books on sf (including The Parliament of Dreams: Conferring on Babylon 5 and Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature) is now seeking contributions for a new book, proposed for publication in 2010, on Doctor Who. This book will focus on the series’ revival since 2005. Contributions are invited on all aspects of the new series, including its scripting, production, and reception, as well as links to the “classic” series. A variety of critical approaches/viewpoints will be encouraged.
Potential authors are asked to submit brief proposals (max. 250 words) for chapters by 1st March 2009. Final chapters (max. 6,000 words) will be due by 1st August 2009. Please send proposals to sjbradshaw@mac.com.
Contributions should follow the style guide at http://www.sf-foundation.org/publications/styleguide.html.
Worldcon 2009
The World Science Fiction Society invites papers for the academic track of the 2009 World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon): Anticipation. This year’s Worldcon returns to Canadian soil for the first time since 2003 and will be held at the Palais des congrès de Montréal in Montréal, Québec (Canada) from Thursday 6 August through Monday 10 August, 2009. This is the first time for Montréal to host Worldcon and only the second Canadian city in Worldcon’s lengthy history.
Science fiction has its roots in as much the anticipations of H. G. Wells’s scientific romances as Jules Verne’s voyages extraordinaires. Anticipation is also a commonly used French term for Science Fiction literature and has bilingual echoes. In honour of our location in the world’s second-largest French-speaking city, the suggested theme for this year is “Anticipations in Science Fiction.”
The Academic Track is pleased to present Special Keynote Speaker John Robert Colombo, one of the pioneering forces in Canadian SF. Other special guests at Worldcon include:
Guest of Honor: Neil Gaiman
Invitée d’honneur: Élisabeth Vonarburg
Artist Guest of Honour: Ralph Bakshi
Editor Guest of Honour: David Hartwell
Publisher Guest of Honour: Tom Doherty
Fan Guest of Honour: Taral Wayne
Master of Ceremonies: Julie Czerneda
The academic track welcomes fifteen-minute papers (in English or French) on a broad range of themes and topics related to science fiction. Please send 300 word abstract (including any audio-visual requirements) as a Rich Text Format file attachment to both Academic Track Division Heads (see below). Although the deadline is January 15, 2009, we will consider late submissions on a case-by-case basis.
Christine Mains: cemains@shaw.ca
Graham J. Murphy: grahammurphy@trentu.ca
SFRA 2009
SFRA 2009: Engineering the Future and Southern-Fried Science Fiction and Fantasy
June 11-14, Atlanta, GA (Wyndham Midtown Hotel)
Guest of Honor: Michael Bishop
Special Guest Authors: F. Brett Cox, Paul di Filippo, Andy Duncan,
Kathleen Ann Goonan, and Jack McDevitt
SFRA is currently accepting individual abstracts and panel proposal for its 2009 conference. We welcome paper and panel submissions that explore any aspect of science fiction across history and media and are particularly interested in those that engage one or both of the conference themes, “Engineering the Future” and “Southern-Fried Science Fiction and Fantasy,” or the work of one or more of the conference’s guest authors.
The 2009 conference’s two themes and its selection of guest authors are inspired by the conference’s location in Atlanta and its co-sponsorship by Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Communication, and Culture. Atlanta, a storied locale in American history, is also in many ways an international city of the future, home to 21st century information, entertainment, technological and military industries, peopled with 21st century demographics, and prone to 21st century situations.
How is the future engineered in science fiction and how has science fiction already engineered our present? The American south has long been well known for its gothic fiction, but it has increasingly figured in works of science fiction and fantasy too. So it is equally fitting to ask, how has the south been an inspiration of science fiction and fantasy and what will its global future in speculative arts and letters be?
The deadline for proposals is April 1, 2009 at midnight EST. Please submit paper and panel proposals by email to sfra2009@gmail.com. Include all text of the proposal in the body of the email (not as an attachment). Please be sure to include full contact information for all panel members and to make all AV requests within each proposal.
For more information, email . And be sure to check out www.sfra2009.com for more details!
Thinking After Dark: Welcome to the World of Horror Video Games
The research group Ludiciné from the University of Montreal, in collaboration with the Research Group on the Creation and Formation of Cinematographic and Theatrical Institutions (GRAFICS) from the University of Montreal and the NT2 Laboratory on Hypermedia Art and Literature from the University of Quebec in Montreal, solicits your proposals for the bilingual (French/English) international conference titled Thinking after Dark: Welcome to the World of Horror Video Games. This conference will be held in Montreal from April 23 to 25, 2009.
Call for papers
As fear is the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind (Lovecraft), human beings have always taken a malicious pleasure in frightening themselves. If literature and cinema were and still represent good means for the expression of horror, nowadays, the experience of fear is as intense in video games.
While academia has been studying horrific literature and films for a few decades, such an interest for the videoludic side of horror has not, until now, showed up. Yet, since the cinematic staging of fear in Alone in the Dark in 1992, Survival Horror has become a prolific genre offering a wide selection of significant games such as the Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Fatal Frame series. Because it is at the crossroads of diverse cultural heritages and the latest technological
developments, and because it exhibits the ins and outs of the matrix that governs all but a few games (spatial navigation and survival), horror video games require a deeper study.
This international conference wishes to study horror video games (not necessarily labeled survival horror) from an eclectic range of critical and theoretical perspectives. It aims to fill a gap in game studies between general theory and analysis of particular genres and games.
Possible Topics
Here are some examples of relevant themes we wish to explore in this conference:
Historical approach
– Origins and history of horror video games
– Impact of the technological evolution on horror video games
Theoretical approach
– Simulation of horror, fear, terror
– Narratives and themes of horror video games
Transmedial approach
– Transmedial study of horror video games (Games/Films/Literature)
– Remediation in films, literature and video games
Socio-cultural approach
– Transnational analysis of horror video games (United States/Japan)
– Social and cultural meanings of horror video games
– Horror video games and censorship
Analytical approach
– Aesthetics of horror video games (lighting, sound, editing, 1st/3rd person perspective)
– Study of specific games or series (Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, Fatal Frame, etc.)
The organizing committee remains open to proposals that respect the general spirit of this call for papers.
Please submit your proposals no later than January 15, 2009 at the following e-mail address: . Acceptance and rejection notifications will be sent by the beginning of February.
Your proposal must include:
1. The title of your paper and an abstract (no more that 500 words).
2. Your academic status, your institutional affiliation, your department and your contact information (mailing address, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address).
3. A short biography underlining your work related to the themes of the conference (no more than 250 words).
A selection of papers will be published in a special issue of Loading…, the journal of the Canadian Game Study Association.
For further information, please visit our website: .
Organizing committee
Bernard Perron, Conference Head, Associate Professor, Department of Art History and Film Studies, University of Montreal
Martin Picard, coordinator, research group Ludicine, University of Montreal
Richard Bégin, Invited Professor in Film Studies, Literatures Department, Laval University
Carl Therrien, research group Ludicine, University of Montreal
Dominic Arsenault, research group Ludicine, University of Montreal
Guillaume Roux-Girard, research group Ludicine, University of Montreal
The Third Annual Science Fiction Foundation Masterclass
Location: University of Liverpool
Dates: June 10th, 11th and 12th, 2009
Class Leaders: Joan Gordon, Adam Roberts, Paul Kincaid.
The Science Fiction Masterclass is held in conjunction with the University of Liverpool. The aim of the Masterclass is to provide those who have a serious interest in sf criticism with the opportunity to exchange ideas with leading figures in the field, and also to use the SFF Collection.
The Masterclass will take place from June 10-12th at the University of Liverpool. Each full day of the Masterclass will consist of morning and evening classes, with afternoons free to prepare. Class leaders for 2009 will be Joan Gordon, Adam Roberts, and Paul Kincaid.
Applicants should write to Liz Batty at sff.masterclass@googlemail.com
Applicants must provide a short CV of either: academic credentials, essay/book publications, reviews and writing sample (this may be from a blog); all of these will be valued equally as we are looking for a mixture of experiences and approaches. A range of hotel recommendations will be forwarded to those accepted.
Applications will be assessed by an Applications Committee consisting of Peter Wright, Joan Haran, and Farah Mendlesohn.
Completed applications must be received by 31st January 2009.
R.D. Mullen Fellowship
Science Fiction Studies announces the R.D. Mullen Fellowship supporting research in the J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Utopian Literature at the University of California at Riverside. Awards of up to $1500 are available to fund
research in the archive during the 2009-10 academic year. Students in good standing in graduate degree-granting programs are eligible to apply. We welcome applications from international students.
The Mullen Fellowship, named in honor of SFS’Â’s founding editor, promotes archival work in the EatonÂ’s extensive holdings, which include over 100,000 hardcover and paperback books, over 250,000 fanzines, full runs of all major pulp and digest magazines, and the manuscripts of prominent sf writers such as Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Anne McCaffrey. Other noteworthy parts of the Collection are: 500 shooting scripts of science fiction films; 3500 volumes of proto-sf “boyÂ’s books” of the Tom Swift variety; works of sf in numerous foreign languages, including Chinese, Czech, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish; a large collection of taped fan conventions and taped interviews with American, British, and French writers; reference materials on topics such as applied science, magic, witchcraft, UFOs, and Star Trek; an extensive collection of anime and manga; and the largest holdings of critical materials on science fiction and fantasy in the United States. Further information about the Eaton Collection can be found online at: http://eaton-collection.ucr.edu.
Applications should include a cover letter explaining the candidateÂ’s academic experience and preparation, a CV, a 2-3 page proposal outlining an agenda for research in the Eaton archive, a prospective budget detailing expenses, and two letters of recommendation from individuals familiar with the candidateÂ’s academic work. Applications should be mailed to: Professor Rob Latham, Department of English, UC-Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521-0323.
The deadline for submission is January 31, 2009. Applications will be reviewed by a committee of sf scholars, and successful applicants will be notified by March 1, 2009. Any questions should be addressed to Rob Latham at: rob.latham@ucr.edu.
Ars Electronica
The 23rd Prix Ars Electronica – International Competition for CyberArts is open for entries.
From its very inception in 1987, the Prix Ars Electronica has been conceived as an open platform for various disciplines at the intersection of art, technology, science and society. More than 3,000 submissions in 2008 have further enhanced the Prix Ars Electronica’s reputation as an internationally representative competition honoring outstanding works in the cyberarts.
The aim of the competition is to continually keep the Prix Ars Electronica updated in line with leading-edge developments in the dynamic field of cyberarts.
This year, six Golden Nicas, twelve Awards of Distinction and approximately 70 Honorary Mentions as well as [the next idea] Art and Technology Grant and the Media.Art.Research Award are presented to participants. The 2009 winners will receive a total of 122,500 euros in prize money.
Prix Ars Electronica 2009
Online Submission Deadline: March 6, 2009
Contact: info@prixars.aec.at
Categories:
Computer Animation / Film / VFX
Digital Musics
Interactive Art
Hybrid Art
Digital Communities
[the next idea] Grant
Media.Art.Research Award
u19 – freestyle computing
More details about all categories and online submission are available only online at: http://prixars.aec.at
Please feel free to forward this to all interesting/ed parties.
With best regards,
Bianca Petscher
on the behalf of the Prix Ars Electronica 2009 Team
Hypertext 2009
The Twenty-First ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia
http://www.ht2009.org/
June 29th – July 1st, 2009, Torino, Italy
SCOPE
The ACM Hypertext Conference is the main venue for high quality peer-reviewed research on “linking.” The Web, the Semantic Web, the Web 2.0, and Social Networks are all manifestations of the success of the link. The Hypertext Conference provides the forum for all research concerning links: their semantics, their presentation, the applications, as well as the knowledge that can be derived from their analysis and their effects on society.
Hypertext 2008, held in Pittsburgh, was a real success. The number of submissions and attendees was up, a successful Student Research Competition took place, and a rejuvenated social linking track added new ideas and connections to the traditional core of the conference.
IMPORTANT DATES
* Technical tracks paper submission deadline: February 2nd, 2009
* Notification to authors: March 16th, 2009
* Camera-ready (final papers to ACM): April 6th, 2009
LOCATION AND DATES
Hypertext 2009 will be held from June 29th to July 1st at the Villa Gualino Convention Center, on the hills overlooking Torino.
The capital of the Piedmont region, Torino lies at the foot of the Alps, the majestic mountains that hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics.
First the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, then one of the European centers of baroque, today Torino is a dynamic city known for its industry, art and culture, sports, research and education, and cuisine.
The timing of Hypertext 2009 provides an excellent opportunity to visit Italy in conjunction with the International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization in Trento (UMAP 2009 – http://umap09.fbk.eu/), and the International Workshop and Conference on Network Science in Venice (NetSci 2009 – http://www.netsci09.net/).
PROGRAM
Hypertext 2009 will feature two stellar keynote speakers: Lada Adamic (University of Michigan) is a noted scholar of social networking and the winner of the 2008 Engelbart Award; Ricardo Baeza-Yates is Vice-President of Yahoo! Research for Europe and Latin America, leading the labs in Spain, Chile, and Israel.
In the conference technical program, professionals from academia, industry, and the media will present innovative ideas and tools exploiting the broad range of links increasingly connecting people, information, communities, and structures. Research topics will be organized into three tracks:
track 1. Information Structure and Presentation (Chairs: Peter Brusilovsky and Cristina Gena)
track 2. People, Resources, and Annotations (Chairs: Andreas Hotho and Vittorio Loreto)
track 3. Hypertext and Community (Chairs: Mark Bernstein and Antonio Pizzo)
TRACK 3: HYPERTEXT AND COMMUNITY
Chairs:
* Mark Bernstein, Eastgate Systems, Inc. (UK)
* Antonio Pizzo, University of Torino (Italy)
The Hypertext and Community track will explore, examine, and reflect upon social cyberculture in electronic media, ranging from literary fiction and creative scholarship to blog and microblog networks, social sites, games, auctions, and markets. Topics will include:
* Hypertext literature
* Theory and practice of expression in wikis, weblogs, and social spaces
* Personal journals, weblogs, and social media
* Net art, literary hypertext, interactive fiction, and games
* Behavioral patterns of social linking
For additional information on the track and the Program Committee, please visit http://www.ht2009.org/track3.php
SUBMISSIONS
Papers must report new results substantiated by experimentation, simulation, analysis, or application. Authors are invited to submit papers presenting original, not previously published works. Submission categories may include regular research papers (max 10 pages) discussing mature work, and short papers (max 5 pages) describing preliminary results of on-going work or novel thought-provoking ideas.
All submissions should be formatted according to the official ACM SIG proceedings template (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates) and submitted via EasyChair (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ht2009). Accepted papers will appear in the Hypertext 2009 Conference Proceedings and also be available through the ACM Digital Library.
DEMOS AND INDUSTRIAL SESSION
Technical demonstration of new tools and innovative applications of hypertext are solicited. One-page demo descriptions, including a list of any required supporting equipment, should be sent to by e-mail to Giancarlo Ruffo, Demo Chair (ruffo@di.unito.it).
Important Demos Dates:
* March 30th, 2009: Submission of proposals
* April 15th, 2009: Notification to proposers
* June 29th, 2009: Demos day
ORGANIZATION
GENERAL CO-CHAIRS:
Ciro Cattuto (ISI Foundation, Torino) and Giancarlo Ruffo (University of
Torino)
PROGRAM CHAIR:
Filippo Menczer (Indiana University)
WORKSHOPS CO-CHAIRS:
Santo Fortunato (ISI Foundation, Torino) and Rossano Schifanella
(University of Torino)
TREASURER:
Roberto Palermo (ISI Foundation, Torino)
*sociopatterns blurb*
The attendees of Hypertext 2009 will also have a chance to experiment with applications mixing real-world data and on-line data. We will deploy active RFID tags in the badges of volunteers and we will run a data collection platform that provides the real-time relations of physical proximity between the attendees. The data collection and visualization systems will be provided by the SocioPatterns project (http://www.sociopatterns.org), and will expose API methods that allow developers to mash up real-world links between the attendees with other types of linking information from the Web.
January 13, 2009
11:07 am
One of this site’s unspoken functions is to serve as a testing ground for new technologies that I intend to add to other sites for MIT and for my consulting clients. This morning is a great example of that: first I added a custom Google search to my site (now accessible at http://www.geoffreylong.com/search) and then, having ironed out the kinks there, added one to the GAMBIT site at http://gambit.mit.edu/search. That’s the tip of the iceberg, though – last night I also upgraded my own Movable Type Pro install to 4.23 so that I can tinker with things like Action Streams, Facebook-enabled commenting and Twitter notifications. Philip, if you’re reading this, consider it a preview of things to come! 🙂
 Attempting to ease into my rededication to reading the classics, I decided to start out with a slim volume that I vaguely remember reading before, when I was in high school or perhaps junior high: Sherwood Anderson’s 1919 Winesburg, Ohio.
As I read through it, I was struck by the truth of the old adage that you never read the same book twice, for the same reason that you never step in the same river twice. When I was younger, I groaned with disinterest while flipping through the pages, skipping ahead to try and find something in it that would catch my interest. I blame this partly on the dullness of the familiar: Anderson based this collection of short stories on his own experiences in a small town in Ohio, and having grown up in one I can easily name similar characters and situations from my own upbringing, even though they were separated by nearly a century and a half. As an adult, now I have more respect for that very quality of timelessness: while the characters at play in these twenty-four lightly linked tales are very much creatures of their era, struggling with the dawn of the industrial age of farming, the notions of women’s liberation and so on, they are also shot through with timeless themes such as the clashing of generations, the struggling with religion (which I can tell you is a very common theme in rural America even now), and the frequently damaging and unfulfilling siren’s song of the city.
Another glint of insight provided by rereading this book as an adult: that very quality that weighed the text down for me as a kid, the ‘dullness of the familar’, is likely to be the same quality that makes the book sparkle for inner-city children intrigued by the strangeness of small town life. Because mine is an inherently multithreaded mind, I’m also reading Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and enjoying its (admittedly satirical) depictions of the class struggles of early New York, largely because Archer’s experiences are so different from my own. It’s almost a variant on The Prince and the Pauper itself, a literary case of “the grass is always greener”, yet somehow both The Age of Innocence and Winesburg, Ohio seem to me to be “written for city people” in a way that you don’t find in many genre works. The advent of urban fantasy seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon (although that too is, I’m sure, something that could stand for some research) with China Mieville’s King Rat standing as, perhaps, the most thoroughly urban fantasy work that springs to mind – there is something about Mieville that is unrelentingly inner-city, so much so that when his Un Lun Dun bears a staggering similarity to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere it feels like less of an homage or a rip-off as it does a kind of grittier remix. It’s a question of “other” versus “wonder”, I suspect, with a certain formula at play as to the nature of the author, the content, and the audence: an author of a place can write about the place for either audiences of of the place or not of the place. Mieville, in his jungle beats and dirty streets, feels like a writer of the city writing about the city for readers in the city, Gaiman feels like a writer of the country writing about the city for readers in the country, and while Anderson comes across as a writer of the country writing about the country, Winesburg, Ohio feels like it’s written for metropolitan audiences.
It’s not for nothing that Anderson’s original title for the book was The Book of the Grotesque; although it’s very easy to imagine Anderson drawing inspiration from the caricatures of Leonardo da Vinci (through which grotesques the artist managed to both learn and convey deep underlying connections and truths about humanity in general), there’s also an undertone of the carnival at play here, with his characters stretched into such horrific amplifications that they wouldn’t be out of place in a traveling freak show. It’s these amplifications that make each of the short tales feel less like stories and more like simple character sketches. Most of them clock in at only a few pages – although there are twenty-four tales in the book, most with succinct, one-word titles like “Hands”, “Adventure” and “Respectability”, the 1992 Penguin paperback I’m reading is a slender 248 pages. Yet the tales are wide-ranging and diverse, so much so that it feels like there might be something for everyone here. The common theme is loneliness, as Malcolm Cowley notes in his introduction:
George Willard is growing up in a friendly town full of solitary persons; the author calls them “grotesques.” Their lives have been distorted not, as ANderson tells us in his prologue, by their having seized upon a single truth, but rather by their inability to express themselves. Since they cannot truly communicate with others, they have all become emotional cripples. Most of the grotesques are attracted one by one to George Willard; they feel that he might be able to help them. In those moments of truth that Anderson loves to describe, they try to explain themselves to George, believing that he alone in Winesburg has an instinct for finding the right words and using them honestly.
While this feels like the kind of heroic self-centeredness only a writer can indulge in (“their immortal souls can only be saved through the power of language!”), it is the ways in which these characters are shown to become cut off from the world that makes their vignettes interesting. Further, as I noted before, the range displayed here means that there’s a little something for everyone in these pages: were I teaching this book to a class, I might divvy the stories up among them based on their interests: a romantic might be asked to analyze the tragedy of Alice Hindman in “Adventure,” while a fan of thrillers might be asked to investigate the horrors of purple-faced Wash Williams in “Respectability”.
Another teaching point for the book might be an examination of Anderson’s language: the author’s sentences are somewhat herky-jerky, not as abrupt as Hemingway but still fairly staccato and occasionally overly simplistic in their structure. (Of course, this is coming from a guy who frequently overuses subphrases and semicolons to string sentences along for multiple lines at a time, so that might be an issue of personal preference.) More disturbing is the gear-grinding manner in which Anderson occasionally leaps back and forth in time from one paragraph to the next. This is done in a fashion not of authorly foreshadowing but more of a storyteller’s aside; in fact, there are multiple places in the book where it becomes all too easy to imagine that you’re sitting on the front porch of the New Willard House, rocking away beside the author himself as he unspools these tales of this town between puffs of a cigarette or sips of homemade lemonade. The author intermittently slips in a sentence in first-person (“I go too fast”, for example) that reminds the reader that these are not events recorded but a stories being consciously and carefully told. It’s an interesting approach, an authorial method more commonly seen in England than in American texts (I think; again, this may be an area for future research) but it fits in well with the general age and flavor of the book as a whole.
Do I like the book? That’s a difficult question to answer, largely because it varies from story to story. Some of the tales remain guilty of the same overwrought “look at me, look at how tragic this is, isn’t this literary?” attitude that I’ve recoiled from ever since I first started reading the classics as a kid, and there are some places in which Anderson’s “lookee at the freakshow” carney barker tone grates on my small-town nerves as an excruciating blend of condescending and pretentious, and the knowledge that Anderson was a small-town kid like me makes me alternate between forgiveness and resentment at his coarse capitalization upon that -Â our? -Â way of life. Still, as a reader, writer and teacher I do recognize the value in the text and the value in reading the text, as illustrated above; therefore, while I might not prescribe this book for pleasure reading (except, perhaps, “Responsibility”, which was indeed pretty cool) I’d still say that Winesburg, Ohio is definitely worth its admittedly brief required time.
One of the announcements I’ve been meaning to make here on this blog is that I’ve been invited to post occasionally over at the official weblog of the Interstitial Arts Foundation. I just published my first post over there, Poetry on the Wing, which is a pointer to the very interstitial work of Bulgarian artist/poet Nedko Solakov. Click through to the article to find out what I mean when I say his work absolutely soars above the rest…
The New York Times’ Freakonomics blog is weighing in on the “public library renaissance”:
…If nobody seems to be out buying books, movies, and music, what are they doing with their leisure time instead?
Apparently: going to the library. The Boston Globe reports that public libraries around the country are posting double-digit percentage increases in circulation and new library-card applications.
Derrick Z. Jackson’s original Boston Globe article, meanwhile, calls libraries “a recession sanctuary” and cites President-Elect Obama’s tendency to use libraries as a “rhetorical anchor” in his speeches. The real chewy stuff, though, is in the statistics:
In Kern County, California, where Diane Duquette has been library director for 22 years, library checkouts were up 19 percent in the last quarter. She told the Bakersfield Californian, “We’ve never had that kind of increase before. Wow. In my time here, we’ve maybe had a 1 percent or 2 percent increase in good years.”
The Boston Public Library is no different. New library cards are up 32.7 percent from July to November of 2008, compared with the same period in 2007. Visits are up 13 percent, from 1.4 million visits to 1.6 million. Checkouts of books, CDs, and DVDs are up 7.2 percent overall over the last fiscal year. More telling is that checkouts have soared between 27 percent and 37 percent at the Egleston Square, Fields Corner, Jamaica Plain, and Orient Heights branches.
New BPL president Amy Ryan said a baby story program at the Copley library has grown from fluctuating between 60 and 80 families to well over 100. Monthly visits to a free Internet homework tutoring service have doubled from 300 to 600. She said anecdotal reports indicate a spike in people using branch libraries to research new careers or returning to school. This is despite the BPL probably facing cuts, too.
What I like is how there’s no hand-wringing in the article about the popularity of CDs and DVDs as well as books in libraries, which is how I think it should be. Back home in Wooster, there was a sizable amount of grumbling about how our new library seems to have more space dedicated to computers than books, but had I been in charge of that project I would have devoted even more space to multimedia use, including the creation of as many underground theaters as I could build for people to reserve for the private screening of DVDs, classic films and – gasp! – video games. I’d be sure to do a heavy cross-sell of other media that tie into the items (wouldn’t it be nifty to do an Amazon-esque mailing list for library patrons that promoted other works by the creators of the stuff they’d checked out, or similar pieces from other media?) but libraries, like literature, shouldn’t be mono-media concepts. If all good things run to the avenue, then the creation and maintenance of libraries as public all-media centers is only logical.
Were Benjamin Franklin creating the nation’s first subscription library today, I’d bet my bottom dollar that he’d include every media type he could get his hands on – he didn’t get to be Benjamin Franklin by being closed-minded. IMHO, libraries absolutely should have Twilight displays, and they should be accompanied by copies of Stoker’s Dracula, books on vampire bats, vampire games, vampire movies like Nosferatu and even classic romances like the works of Jane Austen. At the center of the Venn diagram of what people should want and what they do want is where learning is to be found.
“We have to do it in the Facebook, with the Twittering, the different technology that young people are using today.”
It hurts. Oh, God, it hurts. “Out of touch” doesn’t even begin to describe it.
OTOH, “do it in the Facebook” just sounds dirty.
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