Experiments in Irrational Exuberance

The talk I gave this spring at the Computers and Writing conference in Normal, Illinois: Experiments in Irrational Exuberance: The Present and Future of Electronic Literature or How I Became E-Literate was recently published online at Kairos.

There's a typo in there that I've decided to just leave in there, describing Spineless Books' “may other surprises” — I meant to say “many other” — but who likes perfect things anyway? and I kind of like the idea of the phrase “may other surprises.”

The New Media Studies focus of the American Book Review that I'm editing (for March/April 2003) came together beautifully over the last few weeks. Almost everyone got their pieces in on time, and I'm excited about the seven reviews — it's a nice cluster. Hopefully the editors of ABR will like it as much I do. The cluster will also be published online at the electronic book review this spring. Looking at all the reviews together, it's amazing how much activity is going on in e-lit/new media publishing over the next several months.

Back to grading papers. My worst moment in that process — one of my students plagiarized — through hamhanded ignorance — several writers by cut/pasting online w/ little or no attribution. The worst part — one of those writers was me. A particularly stupid way to underscore an F. But a couple of papers turned in have been a delight to read — including a very good one on weblogs.