Electronic Literature Communities

This collection provides us with landmarks to find our way through histories that took shape parallely by remembering events, journal launches, mailing lists, formal processes of institutionalisation, publications, of creative work, and other happenings, that served as impetus for the communities to form underneath the umbrella of electronic literature in practice. A broad range of research aims and methodologies are represented within the studies published in this book, ranging from an ethnographic approach (Travlou; Biggs), historical approaches based on interviews and a distant reading of the field (Walker Rettberg), research based on archival materials, documents and ephemera (Rettberg), conversations from Listservs and community websites (Glazier; Leishman), in addition to more traditional literary methodologies, and anecdotal accounts from individuals who were active participants developing the communities they discuss. Along with individual practiced-based approaches to community writing practices (Lovlie), we find analyses of particular communities that formed around platforms, or particular wrting practices devoted to authors working with Flash (Leishman), or as part of the Interactive Fiction community (Montfort and Short). A most contemporary outlook on an emergent community of writers forming around a particular writing practice in networked media is Marino and Wittig's contribution devoted to how the collaborative writing genre known as Netprovs emerged.

(Source: Introduction of Electronic Literature Communities, by Scott Rettberg and Patricia Tomaszek)