In this open access book, Reham Hosny delves into the idiosyncrasies of Arabic electronic literature (e-lit), examining its rich historical roots and contemporary evolution.
@arabicelit offers a comprehensive exploration of Arabic electronic literature, tracing its lineage from 12th-century Arabic poetry to modern digital forms. Through an interdisciplinary lens that incorporates literary studies, digital humanities and critical theory, this book investigates how Arabic e-lit is shaped by its historical, cross-cultural and sociopolitical contexts.
The first chapter uncovers the classical precursors of e-lit, while subsequent chapters tackle the challenges and potential of this emerging field, including language barriers and the digital divide. A unique annotated bibliography serves as a resource for analysing Arabic e-lit, and a new classification framework is proposed to better understand its diverse forms. The book also adopts a cultural materialist perspective to explore the dynamics of Arabic social media texts and examines cross-cultural digital literary approaches by comparing Arabic and American e-lit works. Finally, the conclusion anticipates the future of Arabic e-lit in the age of artificial intelligence. This book is essential reading for scholars, students and enthusiasts of digital literature and Middle Eastern studies, offering fresh insights into a rapidly evolving literary landscape.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on www.bloomsburycollections.com.
Ensslin, Astrid: - Astrid Ensslin is Professor of Dynamics of Virtual Communication Spaces at University of Regensburg, Germany.
Hosny, Reham: - Reham Hosny is a Lecturer at University of Leeds, UK and Minia University, Egypt. She is the director of the Arabic Electronic Literature network (AEL) and an international consultant for the Electronic Literature Organization's ELC4. Reham is the author of Al-Barrah (The Announcer) (2019), the first Arabic augmented reality and hologram novel, in collaboration with Mohamed Nasef. She is a Member of Egypt's Union of Writers and a recipient of the Ihsan Abdel-Qodous Prize for Short Story Writing.
Mencía, María: - María Mencía is an artist/practice-based researcher and Senior Lecturer in the School of Performance and Screen Studies at Kingston University, London, UK. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the ELO-Electronic Literature Organization. Her practice-based research is trans-disciplinary, it explores the poetic space of the in-between in multimodal digital textualities, interactive narratives, poetics of engagement, digital literacies and data visualisation poetics. Most recently, she is the editor of #WomenTechLit, a collection of 28 essays by women working in Electronic Literature.
Saum-Pascual, Alex: - Alex Saum-Pascual is Associate Professor of Contemporary Spanish Literature and New Media at the University of California, Berkeley, USA.
Torres, Rui: - Rui Torres is Associate Professor of Communication Sciences at University Fernando Pessoa, Portugal, teaching Semiotics, Digital Media, and Electronic Literature. He is the director of the academic journal Cibertextualidades, and member of several editorial boards and scientific committees of other Journals in the field of electronic literature. He is, most recently, the editor of Poesia Experimental Portuguesa: Contextos, Ensaios, Entrevistas, Metodologias and PO.EX: Essays from Portugal on Cyberliterature and Intermedia (co-edited with Sandy Baldwin).
