Digital literatures; digital democracies; digital threats?

Technology is reconfiguring the ways in which we consume, produce and disseminate literature, both within literary studies and outside of the academy. However, most importantly, the apparent breakdown of the gatekeeper function that has been triggered by technology in the distribution of both fiction and criticism leads to a form that looks, at least to some perhaps neo-liberal degree, as though it might be more democratic. In this paper, I explore the ways in which these new technologies unearth value structures within our discipline that have been present for a long time, despite the corrective efforts of cultural studies, but are now more overtly surfacing in a swing back toward Leavisite modes. How are we to strike a balance and sensitivity in our practice of reading and teaching towards a liberal model of value and a top-down authoritarian approach? How might technology enable or hinder such a balancing act

“You will see the logic of the design of this”: from historiography to taxonomography in the contemporary metafiction of Sarah Waters’s Affinity

Although, in some ways, Sarah Waters’s Affinity looks akin to historiographic metafiction, M.-L. Kohlke has persuasively argued that the text is more accurately dubbed “new(meta)realism”, a mode that demonstrates the exhausted potential of the form. This article suggests that genre play and a meta-generic mode, dubbed taxonomography, might be a further helpful description for the mechanism through which Waters’s novel effects its twists and pre-empts the expectations of an academic discourse community. This reading exposes Waters’s continuing preoccupation with the academy but also situates her writing within a broader spectrum of fiction that foregrounds genre as a central concern. Ultimately, this article asks whether Waters’s novel can, itself, be considered as a text that disciplines its own academic study in the way that it suggests that the academy has become, once more, blind to class

Is UK humanities research reaching the widest possible audience?

Report points to 'serious dangers for the international standing of UK research' in humanities and social sciences. Today marks the launch of another report on open access, a topic area that is rapidly becoming saturated. The latest document, funded by the Higher Education Funding Council of England (Hefce) and overseen by the British Academy, specifically focuses on the humanities and social sciences in an international environment. The conclusions are fairly clear: • Hefce's "green" open access recommendations (research accessed via digital repositories) – with up to 24 month embargoes and allowances for exemptions – meet with approval. • Research Councils UK (RCUK) is unrealistic and its policies, we are told, "pose serious dangers for the international standing of UK research in the humanities". While such work is welcome, it must be stressed that there are also some problems with the research here. The most notable problem is the fact that the researchers destroyed datasets in order to preserve commercial confidentiality. Nobody can, therefore, check these findings and they must be treated with caution

The botnet: webs of hegemony/zombies who publish

The scholarly communication structure at present bears a strong resemblance to a malware system called a botnet. This piece explores this metaphor and proposes ways in which the library can become a bi-directional information hub called the Research Output Team as a potential antidote

'The time that remains: Elia Suleiman and the London Palestinian Film Festival 2010' [Review] Elia Suleiman (2009) The time that remains

A review of Elia Suleiman's latest film and his appearance at the London Palestinian Film Festival, 2010

Interdisciplinarity [2nd edition] by Joe Moran

A review of 'Interdisciplinarity 2nd edition' by Joe Mora

Still here: post-millennial metafiction and crypto-didacticism

A piece on mutations in metafiction and the didacticism therei

Gatekeepers in a digital wasteland

It is already a cliché to announce the demise of the book in the wake of the digital revolution. While it might be unwise to stake our futures on the printed-and-bound codex, it seems doubtful that a shift in the way words are delivered will result in the downfall of long-form writing itself. What does seem questionable, however, is the persistence of the current publishing model in which publishers act as gatekeepers. In the ‘democratised’ digital republic enabled by self-publishing, what threatens to remain is a wasteland in which the inhabitants elect their culture via a ballot of sparsely distributed consumer capital. The ‘book’ looks likely to persist. What may not is the current way in which we decide what is worthwhile between the (digital) covers

Oral evidence

Oral evidence given to the House of Commons BIS Select Committee Inquiry into Open Access

Historical sources for Pynchon's Peter Pinguid Society

This short piece provides the cumulative textual evidence that Pynchon consulted a single source, Golder, F.A., 1915. “The Russian Fleet and the Civil War”. The American Historical Review, 20(4), pp.801-812, to construct the historicity of the Peter Pinguid Society episode in The Crying of Lot 49, as opposed to consulting the original Arkhiv Morskogo Ministerstva, Dielo Kantseliarii Morskogo Ministerstva, no. 91, pt. III., pp. 102, 103