Week 5: Temporality & "Cruising"

Image of Cruising, Electronic Literature Organization.

What is narrative and how is it affected by new media developments. The focus will be on time-based narratives with a close reading of Cruising by Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar.

Basing our discussion on the week’s readings we’ll critique these main ideas:

• feminism
• nonlinearity
• temporality
• transiency
• rhizomatic
• time-based narrative
• multimodality

Discussion Questions:

Q1. How can we define nonsequentiality/multi-linearity, interactivity, narrative?
Q2. To what extent are these aspects determined by the text, the reader, the digital format?
Q3. What kinds of narratives are especially suited for a multi-linear/interactive format? Are there stories that can only be told in an online format?
Q4. Read Cruising. Analyse the structure of the narrative (is it non-linear, multi-linear?). How does it engage the reader? What are the textual mechanisms by which the text achieves engagement?

Required Readings:

Update:  After e-mailing the Currents' staff, they've given me a new URL leading to Marsh's essay:

http://currents.cwrl.utexas.edu/fall01/marsh/marsh.html 

Espen Aarseth, “Nonlinearity and Literary Theory,” Bill Marsh, "Reading Time: For a Poetics of Hypermedia Writing," Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar, Cruising, Jessica Laccetti, "Where to Begin? Multiple Narrative Paths in Web Fiction."

Recommended Readings:

Update: While I track down a cached copy of the following text, have a read of Megan Sapnar & Ingrid Ankerson's responses to students' interview questions about Cruising: http://culturenet.wordpress.com/tag/megan-sapnar-ankerson/

Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar, “Author Description, Cruising.”