Elizabeth Swanstrom is an American researcher in literature,

media theory Media studies is a discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history, and effects of various media; in particular, the mass media. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but it mos ...

and the

digital humanities Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...

. She is associate professor of English at the

University of Utah The University of Utah (the U, U of U, or simply Utah) is a public university, public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret (Book of Mormon), Deseret by the General A ...

and co-editor of the journal ''Science Fiction Studies''. She is the author of ''Animal, Vegetable, Digital'', a Co-Editor of ''Science Fiction studies'', and a Co-Editor of the ''Electronic Book Review''. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara in June 2008, an M.P.W. in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California, and a B.A. in Classics from New College of Florida. Her areas of study include

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction that involves supernatural or Magic (supernatural), magical elements, often including Fictional universe, imaginary places and Legendary creature, creatures. The genre's roots lie in oral traditions, ...

, the history of science and technology, and the

. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at Umeå University's HUMlab in northern Sweden, and the Florence Levy Kay Fellow in the Digital Humanities in the English Department at Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

Career

Her research includes science fiction, natural history, media theory, and the digital humanities. She examines texts, art installations, and cultural artifacts, including video games "born digital". She is an associate professor at the University of Utah. Before joining the faculty at the University of Utah, she was an assistant professor of English at Florida Atlantic University. Here she received a

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 ...

grant to create CELL: a search engine for

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 ...

. Swanstrom is a member of the developmental and editorial team of The Agrippa Files: ''An Online Archive of Agrippa''. She writes short fiction and serves as co-editor for the online literary journal ''Sunspinner''.

Honors and awards

*Elizabeth Agee Manuscript Prize for ''Animal, Vegetable, Digital.'' (2014) *Shortlist, Science Fiction Research Association Pioneer Award (2010) *AWP Intro Journals Award in Creative Nonfiction for ''The Divers''.

Works

*Swanstrom, Elizabeth. ''Animal, Vegetable, Digital: Experiments in New Media Aesthetics and Environmental Poetics.'' Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, March 2016 *Small Screen Fictions with

Astrid Ensslin Astrid Christina Ensslin is a German digital culture scholar, and Professor of Dynamics of Virtual Communication Spaces at the University of Regensburg. Ensslin is known for her work on digital fictions and video games, and her development ...

and Pawel Frelik, published by Paradoxa Swanstrom experiments with adding layers of information and interpretation to text files. She collaborated on ''Inventory of Affect'' which "reads any .txt file for its emotional content." ''A Field Guide to Artificial Nature(s)'' (2018) uses a web framework to create a visualization of the texts weather, climate, geography, animals, and plants to show relationships between texts and environment. She has edited journals, including a 2013 stint as a guest editor for the '' Digital Humanities Quarterly'' as well as currently editing the '' Electronic Book Review'' and ''Science Fiction Studies''. Swanstrom provided a keynote, "Forecasting Sustainability" for the Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries conference in 2023.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swanstrom, Lisa Living people 21st-century American writers 21st-century American women writers American editors American women editors Electronic literature writers University of California, Santa Barbara alumni University of Utah faculty Year of birth missing (living people)