International expert to talk on literature in the 21st century

An international expert will explore the use of new technology in writing at a seminar at The University of Queensland on August 9.

Professor Thomas Swiss from the University of Iowa will present the seminar for UQ’s Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies.

Through visual examples, he will discuss the changing contexts in which literature is produced and consumed as a result of new media environments, like the Internet.

Professor Swiss’ research looks at the interplay of digital texts, the institutions that support and promote them, and the emerging audiences that respond to them.

He will discuss the possibilities for literature offered by the electronic convergence of words, images, and sound.

“The growing electronic literature community brings together artists, graphic designers, sound technicians, musicians, and computer programmers,” Professor Swiss said.

“This new community constitutes an artistic underground, a literary movement that alternately challenges and ignores the institutional apparatus for ‘traditional’ or ‘mainstream’ literature,” he said.

Professor Swiss is a professor of English and Rhetoric at the University of Iowa. During the 2005-06 academic year, he will be visiting professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Minnesota. He is also editor of The Iowa Review Web, a journal for digital and experimental writing and art, and President of the Electronic Literature Organization.

The seminar is entitled New Media Literature and Art: A Writer’s Perspective and will be held on Tuesday, August 9 at 2:00pm in the Social Sciences and Humanities Library Conference Room, Duhig Building, Building No. 2, St Lucia Campus. All welcome.

For further information, contact Ms Rebecca Ralph, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies (07 3346 9764, admin.cccs@uq.edu.au) or Elizabeth Kerr at UQ Communications (07 3365 2339, e.kerr@uq.edu.au).