The ELO and US Electronic Literature in the 2000s

The Electronic Literature Organization was founded as a literary nonprofit organization in 1999 after the Technology Platforms for 21st Century Literature conference at Brown University. Today, the ELO is one of the most active organizations in the field, central to the practice of literature in the United States and its establishment as an academic discipline. This presentation will briefly outline the history of the organization, the ways that its mission, profile, and focus of has evolved and changed over its first decade, and offer some tentative insights into the ways that an institutionally structured community can facilitate network-mediated art practice.