Following a very successful day of discussion on the digital humanities MITH hosted earlier this semester with Johanna Drucker and Jerome McGann, please join us for a morning of discussion on electronic literature. In preparation for the Electronic Literature Organization’s impending move to MITH (www.eliterature.org), two of the ELO’s directors, ALAN LIU (Professor of English, University of California Santa Barbara) and JOE TABBI (Professor of English, University of Illinois Chicago) will visit to present talks on the preservation and collecting of electronic literature, as well as a new curriculum (at Santa Barbara) to support its teaching.

The talks will take place from 9:30-12:00 on Friday, April 28 in the McKeldin Special Events room (#6137). The schedule will be as follows:

* ALAN LIU, “Preserving Electronic Literature” (9:30-10:00)

* JOSEPH TABBI, “The Directory of Electronic Literature” (10:00-10:30)

* Discussion with Liu and Tabbi (10:30-11:00)

* Break (11:00-11:15)

* ALAN LIU, “The University of California Transliteracies Project: Research in the Technological, Social, and Cultural Practices of Online Reading” (11:15-12:00)

ALAN LIU, Professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, is one of the most accomplished theorists in the digital humanities today. He is the initiator of numerous digital projects, including the Voice of the Shuttle (http://vos.ucsb.edu/index.asp), the earliest and still the largest humanities portal on the Web. His most recent book is _The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information_ (University of Chicago Press, 2004). JOE TABBI, Professor of English at University of Illinois Chicago, is the author most recently of _Cognitive Fictions_ (University of Minnesota Press, 2002) and is the founding editor of _ebr_ or the _electronic book review_ (http://www.electronicbookreview.com/), which has evolved into an essential hub for writing and scholarship on new media and electronic literature.

Coming up @MITH, *Tuesday* May 2, 11:00-12:00 : A discussion with SCOTT McCLOUD, internationally renowned author of _Understanding Comics_ and _Reinventing Comics_. The discussion is an opportunity to meet him and discuss his work in a roundtable setting. McCloud will give the English department’s Petrou Lecture that afternoon, at 3:30 in SQH 1120, entitled “Comics as Storytelling.” (This is the second of a two-part Petrou lecture series on New Media Storytelling–author and artist Shelley Jackson visited earlier in the semester.)

View MITH’s complete Spring Speakers Schedule here:

http://mith2.umd.edu/programs/mith_speakers_spring_2006.pdf

Contact: Neil Fraistat, Acting Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-5896).