Reading Digital Literature: American-German Conference Brown University | October 4 - 7, 2007 | Roberto_Simanowski /at/ Brown [.] edu Idea: Today, one task for scholars of literature -- or any hermeneutic discipline open to digital media -- may be to do what Andre Bazin once did for cinema. Bazin asked how to read a movie and investigated the semiotics of film rather than just content or technique; in doing so, he contributed to the development of cinematic literacy. In like manner, what we need today is the development of “digital literacy”. Digital aesthetics should be concerned with the use digital literature makes of the specific features of digital media to express its thoughts and feelings. How are interactivity, intermediality, performance, and other aspects of digital media applied to convey a specific aesthetic message or performance? What is a digital sign and how can it be read? With what methods can digital literature be approached? This conference aims to answer these and related questions through close readings of specific examples of digital literature. Target: The conference aims at participants and attendees interested in new topics and methods in the humanities. The conference especially targets teachers who incorporate digital literature and art into their courses, and students who are attending such courses, as well as all those who create digital literature and art or are simply interested in understanding this new subject. Format: Contributors are asked to discuss pieces with regard to their particular strategies for the expression of significance and affect. Participants will be asked to read a paper of another participant in advance and give a short comment on it during the conference. Co-Events: The conference was scheduled, and is promoted, in coordination with the Pixilerations festival at Brown University, which itself is part of the FirstWorksProv-Festival in Providence. Part of the conference will be an exhibition with three installations of digital literature, public screenings of digital literature as well as writing performances of digital literature by Brown-affiliated authors. Publication: The conference’s lectures and the summary of the discussions will be published as a special issue of the online journal Interfictions.org (hosted by Brown), and as a book edited by Roberto Simanowski, Peter Gendolla, and Jörgen Schäfer.