"The Book vs. the X-Box:
Is Literature Dying?"

A symposium sponsored by
The Social Philosophy and Policy Center,
The Department of German, Russian and East Asian Languages, and
The Department of Romance Languages

Friday, November 4, 2005
1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m
Bowen-Thompson Student Union
Mylander Room (BTSU 207)

This symposium brings together four scholars to debate some of the central questions raised by the development of new technologies for the future of literature.

Among other questions, the speakers will address the following: Many indicators give us the impression that reading and writing are waning in the contemporary world. Is this actually the case?  How has literature been affected by the popularization of other forms of story-telling, such as films, television, or even video games? What are the effects of globalization on literature? Is there a future for books in an era dominated by computers? Could we be witnessing the end of literature as we know it? Is this something that we should regret?

SPEAKERS:

Josef Haslinger  is Professor of Literature at the University of Leipzig and a visiting scholar at the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa. Professor Haslinger studied philosophy, theater history, and German studies in the University of Vienna. He has taught at the Universities of Kassel, Innsbruck, and Vienna. He has been a writer in residence and guest professor at Oberlin College and Bowling Green State University.   In his home country, Professor Haslinger is respected for his willingness to confront Austria's past in writing that contemplates the last world war's effects on Europe's current social and political forces. His novel OpernBall (1995), a bestseller in Germany, was translated into 13 languages and adapted for television. A subsequent novel, Das  Vaterspiel, portrays Holocaust survivors and perpetrators living in the United States. His most recent books include At the End of the Culture of Language. The Fate of Writing, Speaking, and Reading (2004).

Thomas Swiss is Professor of English and Rhetoric of Inquiry at the University of Iowa and the editor of the Iowa Review Web --a journal of new media writing and art.  He is also the President of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Literature Organization. His teaching and writing have most recently focused on "New Media" literature and its relationship to image and sound. He is interested in the interplay of digital texts, the institutions that support and promote them, and the emerging audiences that respond to them. The author of two collections of poems, Rough Cut and Measure, his latest books include Unspun (New York University Press), an edited volume that explores concepts that help shape our understanding of the World Wide Web and its wide-ranging influence on contemporary culture; New Media Poetics: Texts, Technotexts, Theories, an edited anthology on poetry in a digital age (The MIT Press), and The World Wide Web: Magic, Metaphor, and Power (Routledge). Thomas Swiss's collaborative poems appear online in such journals as Postmodern Culture and electronic book review, as well as in museum exhibits and art shows.

Laurence Goldstein received a B.A. from UCLA in 1965 and a Ph.D. from Brown in 1970. He has taught at the University of Michigan since 1970. Since 1977 he has been the editor of Michigan Quarterly Review, the University of Michigan’s scholarly and literary journal. He has also served in the Editorial Board of Michigan University Press from 1991 to 1995. His research interests include the relation of technology and literature; film (especially fiction and poetry about movies and movie-making); creative writing; classical myth and modern literature.  Professor Goldstein has published three books of literary criticism: Ruins and Empire: The Evolution of a Theme in Augustan and Romantic Literature (1977), The Flying Machine and Modern Literature (1986), and The American Poet at the Movies: A Critical History (1994). He has also published three books of poetry: Altamira (1978), The Three Gardens (1987), and Cold Reading (1995). In addition he has edited or coedited six other books. In 2002, a conference entitled “Making a Place for Literature” was held at the University of Michigan in honor of Professor Goldstein for his 25 years as editor of Michigan Quarterly Review.

George Landow is Professor of English and Art History at Brown University. He holds the AB and PhD from Princeton University and an MA from Brandeis University. Landow has taught at Columbia, the University of Chicago, Brasenose College, Oxford, and Brown Universities, and he has twice taught at NEH summer institutes for college teachers at Yale. A leading scholar on Ruskin and Victorian literature and culture, Professor Landow is also internationally recognized as a theorist of hypertext application and design. He played a central role in Brown University's seminal Intermedia hypertext project and has written and lectured widely on electronic literacy. His 1992 study, Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Literary Theory and Technology inaugurated serious academic consideration of electronic writing systems around the world. His other books on hypertext and digital culture include Hypermedia and Literary Studies (MIT, 1991), and The Digital Word: Text-Based Computing in the Humanities (MIT, 1993) both of which he edited with Paul Delany. He has also edited Hyper/Text/Theory, published by Hopkins University Press in 1994. Professor Landow is also the founder and current webmaster of the Victorian, the Postcolonial Literature Webs, and Cyberspace, Hypertext, and Critical Theory Web sites. These three websites include 40,000 documents and that have won more than 50 awards, including those from NEH, the BBC, the Britannica, the French Ministry of Education, and organizations in Australia, Italy, New Zealand, Russia, and Singapore.

A CLOSING RECEPTION FOR RESEARCHERS AND GUESTS
follows immediately after the symposium
3:30 p.m. –5:00 p.m.
BTSU 202 Lenhart Grand Ballroom

Back to the 2005 Conference Home Page