CFP: Special issue of Dichtung Digital
Abstracts are now invited for the 2007 special issue of Dichtung Digital (http://www.dichtung-digital.com/), one of the leading international journals on digital literature and aesthetics. As the title 'New Perspectives on Digital Literature: Criticism and Analysis' suggests, the focus of this issue is on how examples of digital narrative, poetry and drama may be close-read and analysed in such a way as to show that electronic forms of literature can and indeed must be examined by means of both conventional and innovative analytical heuristics, to give exemplary evidence that digital 'literature' deserves to be categorised as such, less on the grounds of introspective subjectivity than theoretically well-argued, systematic textual investigation, and to contextualise digital literature with previous, non-digital forms of 'written art' in such a way as to demonstrate intertextual canonicity. Recent developments in the domain of digital literature include, for instance, fan and slash fiction, blogs, computer games, interactive narrative, as well as hybrid, multimodal forms of hypertext, hypermedia and cybertext. On the theoretical side, hypermedia theorists such as Marie Laure Ryan, Espen Aarseth, Roberto Simanowski, N. K. Hayles, George Landow, J.D. Bolter, Michael Joyce and Stuart Moulthrop have been developing approaches in Text World/Possible Worlds Theory, Game Theory, Poststructuralism, Deconstruction, Postcolonialism, Post/Cyberfeminism and Media Theory more generally to establish a critical debate suitable for such hybrid and liminal literary forms as digital narrative, poetry and drama. Similarly, efforts have been made both bottom-up and top-down to take aesthetic texts-on-screen in a distinctly user-/reader-friendly direction.
The forthcoming Dichtung Digital issue is situated in the context of those new developments, and we warmly invite contributions that take (some of) them into account as well as provide (monofocal and comparative) analyses of individual texts.
We are asking that potential authors express their interest by replying informally to Dr. Astrid Ensslin Astrid.Ensslin@manchester.ac.uk or Dr. Alice Bell a.m.bell@sheffield.ac.uk.
The deadline for abstracts (ca. 250 words) is 30th November, 2006.
The deadline for full papers (3,000-5,000 words) is 28 February, 2007.
We look forward to your reply.
Best wishes,
Dr. Astrid Ensslin and Dr. Alice Bell,
The Editors
