Dene Grigar
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Dene (Rudyne) Grigar is a digital artist and scholar based in
Vancouver, Washington Vancouver ( ) is a city on the north bank of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington, located in Clark County, Washington, Clark County. Founded in 1825 and incorporated in 1857, Vancouver had a population of 190, ...
. She was the president of the
Electronic Literature Organization The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is a nonprofit organization "established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature". It hosts annual conferences, awards annual prizes for works of a ...
from 2013 to 2019. In 2016, Grigar received the International Digital Media and Arts Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. As director of the
Electronic Literature Lab The Electronic Literature Lab, housed in Washington State University Vancouver, Washington State University, Vancouver, maintains obsolete computers and hardware to preserve and present early electronic literature, video games, and internet works su ...
at Washington State University, Vancouver, Grigar collects, preserves, and analyzes digital media.


Early life and career

Dene Grigar married John Barber. Her mother is from what was then Czechoslovakia. Her interest in
electronic literature Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity, multimodality or Generative literature, algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically. Works of electronic literature ar ...
began in fall 1991 when she took a graduate course with Nancy Kaplan in hypertext. She graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas with an MA in humanities in 1991 and a PhD in humanities in 1995. Grigar is currently the professor and director of The Creative Media & Digital Culture in the Department of Digital Technology & Culture at Washington State University Vancouver.


Scholarship

Grigar is professor and director of the Creative Media & Digital Culture Program at
Washington State University Vancouver Washington State University Vancouver (also WSU Vancouver) is a regional campus of Washington State University. WSU Vancouver is located on a campus outside of Vancouver, Washington, approximately north of the Columbia River and north of do ...
. Her scholarship is largely focused on
electronic literature Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity, multimodality or Generative literature, algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically. Works of electronic literature ar ...
, and has appeared in journals like ''Computers and Composition'' and ''Technoculture.'' She co-authored ''Traversals: The Use of Preservation for Early Electronic Writing'' (
MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...
2017) with
Stuart Moulthrop Stuart Moulthrop (born 1957 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States) is an innovator of electronic literature and hypertext fiction, both as a theoretician and as a writer. He is author of the hypertext fiction works '' Victory Garden'' (1991), whic ...
. The book was a product of a 2013
National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...
(NEH) Startup Grant. Grigar's scholarly interests can be traced back to the early 1990s, when she took a class with Nancy Kaplan. Grigar was a member of the
Kairos ''Kairos'' () is an ancient Greek language, Greek word meaning 'the right or critical moment'. In modern Greek, ''kairos'' also means 'weather' or 'time'. It is one of two words that the ancient Greeks had for 'time'; the other being (). ...
editorial board.


Works


Essays

Grigar co edited a volume of essays, ''Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms, and Practices. ''This work collates essays on the state of electronic literature in 2021. Source: Grigar's essays mainly concern pedagogy and archiving aspects of electronic literature. * ''Defending your life in MOOspace: A report from the electronic edge,'' 1997 with John Barbar (presented at the Thirteenth Computers and Writing Conference, 1997) * ''Over the line, online, gender lines: Email and women in the classroom, ''1999. * ''On Chance and Change and the Paths on Which They Take Us,'' 2006 * ''The Jungfrau Tapes: A Conversation with Diana Slattery about The Glide Project'', both published by the '' Iowa Review Web'' * ''Electronic literature: Where Is It''?, 2008. * ''Curating Electronic Literature as Critical and Scholarly Practice,'' 2014 * ''Born digital preservation of e-lit: a live internet traversal of Sarah Smith's King of Space,'' 2019 * ''The computer is not a tool to help us do whatever we do, it is what we do, it is the medium on which we work: Dene Grigar in conversation with Piotr Marecki,'' 2019 * ''Challenges to Archiving and Documenting Born-Digital Literature: What Scholars, Archivists, and Librarians Need to Know,'' 2021 (Grigar's chapter in ''Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms, and Practices''.)


Electronic literature and artworks

Grigar has produced a number of multimodal artworks, including: *''Fallow Fields: A Story in Two Parts'' (2004) was published in ''The Iowa Review Web'', *''When Ghosts Will Die'', a finalist in the 2006 ''Drunken Boat'' Panliterary Awards. *''24-Hr. Micro-Elit Project'' centers on a collection of 24 stories about life in an American city in the 21st century and involves 140 characters or less delivered—that is, "tweeted"—on Twitter over a 24 hr. period. Launched on Friday, August 21, 2009. The work asked for other contributions, and over 85 stories were submitted by 25+ participants from five countries in that timeframe * ''Fort Vancouver Mobile'' project was funded by the NEH. This was a locative / mixed media effort that brings together a core team of 23 scholars, digital storytellers, new media producers, historians, and archaeologists to create location-aware nonfiction content for mobile phones to be used at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. * ''Curlew'', which was featured at the 2014 OLE.1 festival in
Naples Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...
,


Books

''Pathfinders: Documenting the Experience of Early Digital Literature'' with
Stuart Moulthrop Stuart Moulthrop (born 1957 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States) is an innovator of electronic literature and hypertext fiction, both as a theoretician and as a writer. He is author of the hypertext fiction works '' Victory Garden'' (1991), whic ...
''.'' This documents the Pathfinders project, funded by the National Endowment for Humanities, to archive and transmit
Judy Malloy Judy Malloy (born Judith Ann Powers; January 9, 1942) is an American poet whose works embrace the intersection of hypernarrative, magic realism, and information art. Beginning with ''Uncle Roger'' in 1986, Malloy has composed works in both new m ...
's ''Uncle Roger'', John McDaid's ''
Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse ''Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse'' is an early multimedia hypermedia text written by John McDaid and released by Eastgate Systems in 1993. The main portion of ''Funhouse'' was written for Macintosh's HyperCard app, but portions of the hypermedia ...
'',
Shelley Jackson Shelley Jackson (born 1963) is an American writer and artist known for her cross-genre experimental works. These include her hyperfiction ''Patchwork Girl'' (1995) and her first novel, '' Half Life'' (2006). Biography In her own words: "Shelley ...
's ''Patchwork Girl'', and Bill Bly's '' We Descend''. This work has had more than 57,000 visits as of December 2024. ''Traversals: A method of preservation for born-digital texts'', with
Stuart Moulthrop Stuart Moulthrop (born 1957 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States) is an innovator of electronic literature and hypertext fiction, both as a theoretician and as a writer. He is author of the hypertext fiction works '' Victory Garden'' (1991), whic ...
, 2017 (includes ''The Many Faces of
Judy Malloy Judy Malloy (born Judith Ann Powers; January 9, 1942) is an American poet whose works embrace the intersection of hypernarrative, magic realism, and information art. Beginning with ''Uncle Roger'' in 1986, Malloy has composed works in both new m ...
's Uncle Roger'') ''The Challenges of Born-Digital Fiction: Editions, Translations, and Emulations'' with Mariusz Pisarski, 2024 is a work that straddles both print and online multimedia aspects to explain how the Electronic Literature Lab preserved and emulated
Judy Malloy Judy Malloy (born Judith Ann Powers; January 9, 1942) is an American poet whose works embrace the intersection of hypernarrative, magic realism, and information art. Beginning with ''Uncle Roger'' in 1986, Malloy has composed works in both new m ...
’s '' its name was Penelope'', produced on
Eastgate Systems Eastgate Systems is a hypertext publisher and software company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts. Eastgate is a pioneer in hypertext publishing and electronic literature and one of the best known publishers of hypertext fiction. It publ ...
' Storyspace platform, and John McDaid’s Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse and Stuart Moultrop’s ''Hyperbola: A Digital Companion to Gravity’s Rainbow'' and ''Dreamtime'', both created with
HyperCard HyperCard is a application software, software application and software development kit, development kit for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It is among the first successful hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web. HyperCard com ...
.


Curations and exhibitions

Dene Grigar's 1997 Nouspace Gallery and Media Lounge was a MOO that "offered a place to continue thinking about what it means to live and work online and how one best interacts with and presents multimedia on the web." as Marjorie Luesebrink described in #WomenTechLit as a landmark innovation Grigar developed The NEXT Museum, Library, and Preservation Space, housed in the
Electronic Literature Lab The Electronic Literature Lab, housed in Washington State University Vancouver, Washington State University, Vancouver, maintains obsolete computers and hardware to preserve and present early electronic literature, video games, and internet works su ...
as a digital exhibition and archival space, and has curated many exhibits.Her essays provide a history and explanation of challenges inherent in exhibiting born-digital works. At the
Modern Language Association The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "str ...
(MLA) 2012 Convention, Dene Grigar, Lori Emerson, and Kathi Inman Barnes put on an "Electronic Literature Exhibit". She worked with Kathi Inman Barnes to curate "Electronic Literature and Its Emerging Forms" as an exhibition in the Library of Congress in 2013. This exhibit featured 27 works of born-digital literature, accompanied by 69 print books. Grigar has done extensive work curating exhibitions of digital art and electronic literature, including for the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
and
Modern Language Association The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "str ...
. Grigar helped lead the ELO repository in 2018. Grigar is now curating and editing the NeXt, an online digital museum and library, which presents preserved and emulated works of digital art and writing. Grigar curated the exhibition "Hypertext & Art: A Retrospective of Forms" for the Bibliotheca Hertziana — Max Planck Institute for Art History 5-8 September 2023 and the University of Victoria's McPherson Library 10-14 June 2024.


Grant projects

Grigar has successfully received and executed grants for many projects, including: *
Fort Vancouver Fort Vancouver was a 19th-century fur trading post built in the winter of 1824–1825. It was the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company's Columbia Department, located in the Pacific Northwest. Named for Captain George Vancouver, the fort was ...
Mobile project with Michael Rabby from the U.S. ''National Endowment for the Humanities'' (2013) * Pathfinders Project with Stuart Moulthrop from the U.S. ''National Endowment for the Humanities'' (2013). This work documented five artists by using a Traversal to provide a reading through the work from obsolete computers. * ELO repository to preserve works that the
Electronic Literature Organization The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is a nonprofit organization "established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature". It hosts annual conferences, awards annual prizes for works of a ...
had collected from the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, commonly known as the Mellon Foundation, is a New York City-based private foundation with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the product of the 1969 merger ...
. * The Future of Text In Extended Reality with Frode Hegland from the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., president and chief executive officer of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support origina ...
(2024)


Awards

Grigar won the Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award announced in the
Electronic Literature Organization The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is a nonprofit organization "established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature". It hosts annual conferences, awards annual prizes for works of a ...
2024 conference. In 2025, she and John Barber received the Outstanding Service Award from Washington State University.


Electronic Literature Community

Dene Grigar was president of the Electronic Literature Organization from 2013 to 2019. James O'Sullivan in his opening remarks for the 2019 ELO conference in Cork, Ireland, remarked that "there is a generation of artistic endeavour which would have been lost had it not been for Dene Grigar. But most importantly, she has overseen the rise of a new generation of scholars and practitioners who will always see her as their president."


See also

*
Electronic Literature Organization The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is a nonprofit organization "established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature". It hosts annual conferences, awards annual prizes for works of a ...
* List of electronic literature authors, critics, and works *
Digital poetry Digital poetry is a form of electronic literature, displaying a wide range of approaches to poetry, with a prominent and crucial use of computers. Digital poetry can be available in form of CD-ROM, DVD, as installations in art galleries, in certain ...
* E-book#History *
Electronic literature Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity, multimodality or Generative literature, algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically. Works of electronic literature ar ...
*
Hypertext fiction Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to ...
*
Interactive fiction Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...
* Literatronica


References


External links

American electronic literature writers Living people Washington State University faculty Artists from Washington (state) American multimedia artists Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women artists Electronic literature award winners {{Authority control Electronic literature critics