What
This is a collaborative course blog continuing the work started by students of "Electronic Literature: Hispanic Influences and Digital Theories" taught by Dr. Alex Saum-Pascual (Spring 2015) at UC Berkeley.
~Alex
The current graduate seminar, "Experimental Literature and Digital Machines" builds on that course by examining theories, narratives, poetry and other manifestations of electronic literature in Spanish, both as a particular type of born-digital expression meant to live on a computer, as well as a larger field of inquiry that takes advantages of the capabilities offered by these electronic machines.
Throughout this course students will get familiarized with different genres of electronic literature (hypertext and interactive fictions, kinetic poetry, locative narratives, generative text, code work, etc.) while they learn how to analyze and explore electronic literature’s particular aesthetics, rhetoric and practical functioning. Apart from analyzing the formal characteristics of born-digital pieces, this course will explore the relations between digital experimentalism and some of the most revolutionary works of 20th and 21st Century Spain and Latin America. In order to establish this, students will read experimental literature by Borges and Cortázar, the Spanish Futurists and Catalan visual poets, the Brazilian Concrete poets, and contemporary post digital Spanish writers, among others from the English-speaking world.
We'll periodically post here our readings and experiences related to our explorations of electronic literature. If you are interested in learning more: stay tuned!~Alex