On March 11th, an interdisciplinary community gathered at Doe Library to celebrate the opening of No Legacy || Literatura Electrónica The exhibit, co-curated by DH Fellow Alex Saum-Pascual, Assistant Professor of Spanish, and Élika Ortega, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas, examines electronic literature’s roots in Spanish and Portuguese experimental fiction.

March marks the beginning of an exciting program in electronic literature, organized by DH Fellow Alex Saum-Pascual, Assistant Professor in Spanish and Portuguese. Electronic literature (or e-lit), as defined by the Electronic Literature Organization, refers to “works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer” and encompasses a broad set of forms and practices.

Across departments, instructors are experimenting with different ways to incorporate digital humanities methods and critical perspectives into undergraduate and graduate courses. Students are engaging with the digital by exploring computational methods, building models and reconstructions, and developing theoretical critiques and artistic creations. Below, we highlight a few current and upcoming courses taught by DH Fellows and other campus partners.

Fall 2015

The first set of courses featuring new components funded by DH at Berkeley made their debut this fall.

GSR Position for Spring 2016
Electronic Literature: A Critical Making and Writing Course

Are you an artist? What about a poet? Do you think computers are cool? Do you play with code? Are you a Facebook freak? Come work with Prof. Saum-Pascual!

This summer, Kyle Booten, Ph.D. candidate in Education with a designated emphasis in New Media, explored the fundamentals of Python programming through digital poetry with his undergraduate students. Meeting for six short weeks at the Berkeley Center for New Media, “Poetry and Technology: A Digital Verse Lab” students worked together in groups to produce works of digital poetry.

Yairamaren Román Maldonado, a graduate student in Spanish & Portuguese with a designated emphasis in New Media, attended the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria for the second year in a row, after taking “Electronic Literature in the Digital Humanities: Research and Practice” in 2014. This year, she attended two classes, “Digital Humanities with a Global Outlook” and “Advanced Criticism and Authoring of Electronic Literature”.

This summer, Alex Saum-Pascual, DH Fellow and Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, is working on bringing the electronic literature community to campus.