Thinking of your “communitizing digital literature” article, I wonder what you think about this question in terms of what is good for digital literature? If we’re interested in the question, we obviously don’t see an unproductive tension between literary and media practices — but I do often see the work of contemporaries as tending to be grounded more in one “camp” than the other. Or, to put it differently, the work often shows the origins of its makers.

/ducks the vase thrown by my wife… “Another MA? Are you nuts?!”

And with the help of CWNM graduate and wonderful new media artist Christine Wilks, we have created a valuable archive of our guest lectures which is available to everyone free of charge. We invite you to use it in your classes http://www.creativewritingandnewmedia.com .

As far as places to teach, I don’t know which approach is better for the field, strategically. My thought is that electronic literature folks would have better luck landing in interdisciplinary art programs than they would in creative writing programs, and I think that interdisciplinary programs would benefit from something more than visual arts and performing arts faculty.

But, if I had my druthers, I would like to see every creative writing program have at least one person who can teach digital poetics both for undergrads and grads (who could be joint appointed with a more interdisciplinary art program)… because I think creative writing programs will see a more limited future if they continue down the insular path (which is, electronic literature aside, what they have done more generally). I don’t want to badmouth creative writing programs, but I do think that there is a strong tendency to remedy the shrinking fortunes of writers by overemphasizing the “literary” character of their writing. MFAs can’t simply write literature for English faculty and expect to thrive (or even survive). New media offers some new possibilities to connect with a larger audience.

In terms of monetising I would suggest anybody to run away or be prepared for an academic or IT day job. Nook, Kindle or alike seems to mostly copy print business model and adopt it to digital environment (which should fail in a long run I hope). I might be a bit on the pessimistic side but I don’t see any publisher/hardware manufacturer taking a financial risk with radical change in understanding of e-literature – which is probably quite sane thing to do after all).

Still there is an exciting touch of unexplored in experimenting with the computable media and literature for interested ones and an open mimded MA or PhD seem to be one of the rare spaces to support that.

School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I teach several electronic writing workshops and related digital arts & performance classes. While more closely affiliated with the BFA Writing program, grad students can and do take the courses and one or more students yearly focus on electronic writing. Very interdisciplinary here with support for all kinds of alternative and hybrid practices. I am working to better integrate with our MFA Writing program in hopes people will come here specifically with electronic writing in mind (starting to happen just a little bit).