Where are the Electronic Lit MFA Programs?
Kathleen Fitzpatrick recently emailed me wondering if there were any MFA programs where creative writers could do a graduate degree focused on electronic literature. I could only think of Brown off the top of my head, where they accept one digital writer a year, then it occurred to me that Ed Falco is teaching at Virginia Tech in their MFA program, where they also publish New River. They even mention “new media writing opportunities” on their homepage. But I wonder if any of you might be aware of other MFA programs or the equivalent that emphasize or at least welcome creative writing in digital media? Seems like there should be more of them by now. If not, the MFA in creative writing (industry) is missing an opportunity. Where would you send promising young writers interested in honing both their fiction or poetry skills and their digital media skills?
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10 Responses to “Where are the Electronic Lit MFA Programs?”.
On Facebook, Trevor Dodge recommends The University of Notre Dame (where Steve Tomasula, the author of the new electronic novel TOC is director of the MFA program), The University of Utah, and Poetics at SUNY Buffalo.
Also, Judd Morrissey reminded me:
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).
I’m currently enrolled in the Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media lead by Sue Thomas and Kate Pullinger at the De Montfort University (UK). Sadly the course is closed to new students. It’s a great course valuable in any way you look at it. I would encourage any experimental writer to undergo such experience.
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.
This is a very interesting question you pose, Scott… and the reality of it is disturbing. In general, my first thought is in the direction of interdisciplinary new media arts MFAs (Digital Arts and New Media at Santa Cruz, GASP/MAP at UC Merced, Visual Arts at UCSD, UCLA’s New Media Art, etc. In general, these sorts of MFA programs have a strong focus in visual and performing arts, as opposed to creative writing. But, if I had a student who really wanted to make literary art on a computer, I would urge them to look at these programs along with the more tradition creative writing programs.
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.
I am not working at a U at the mo (or working at all, for that matter), but I note that David Jhave Johnston–who is doing fabulous work such as http://vispo.com/jhave and http://glia.ca — is doing a doctorate at Concordia U in Montréal under Jason Lewis–who also has done some first class work. I’m a fan of both the student and the teacher, so I’d certainly recommend whatever it is they have there.
My digital literary art piece, “The Way North” is being taught at the University of Greenwich, London. It is in the regular English Dept. curriculum. Not as a course to teach writers, but readers. There’s been a very positive response from students, as they want to learn genres of literature that are an alternative to books.
I think e-lit is doing pretty well, really, in courses for readers. When the Electronic Literature Collection was down for a day while we were switching servers, I got emails from three different teachers who were using it in their university courses this term, wanting to know where an important part of their curriculum had gone. And I can rattle off a bunch of places where you could go to study electronic literature in graduate programs in the US and elsewhere (you could write an MA on electronic literature at the University of Bergen, for instance). The more challenging question is where do you go do a graduate degree in which your primary activity is producing electronic literature? Fewer institutional homes for that.
As Jaka says, Kate Pullinger and I set up an Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media which was closed after 3 yrs because of financial constraints. Our last batch of students finished in September 2010. As an online programme we had students in many parts of the world, especially Africa, and we have been very disappointed by the closure of this ground-breaking course. However we do at least have a growing cohort of very interesting PhD students working in various areas of new media.
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 .
Very interesting discussion. I’m a creative writing grad student at Kennessaw State U. in Atlanta, and also a graphic artist… the New Media work I’ve experienced so far has been a lot of fun, but as Davin mentioned, the overly “literary” feel to it, while not bad per se, isn’t something your average genre reader (sci fi, horror, romance) would seek out. Thanks for the information on the different programs, another MA isn’t out of the question.
/ducks the vase thrown by my wife… “Another MA? Are you nuts?!”
Scott, the list that’s being assembled is very useful. Davin takes things in an interesting direction when he poses the advantage of incorporating the digital to creative writing as “field.” And of course, the conversation naturally errupts when students or young writers inquire — “where should I go to learn more of this?”
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.
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