“The Eternal Return of Print-Digital Literary Publishing” with Élika Ortega

The Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia invites you to attend a virtual presentation on “The Eternal Return of Print-Digital Literary Publishing” by Élika Ortega on Wednesday, 20 April, 2–3:15 p.m. ET. This Zoom presentation is free and open to the public; advance registration is required. Click here to view the details and register.

Élika will look at the cycles of enthusiasm and retrenchment in print-digital literary publishing since the mid 1980s. In an era where it’s still unclear if the digital will yield a new standard form of the book beyond the e-book, exploring literary/material experiments like Amaranth Borsuk, Kate Durbin, and Ian Hatcher’s ABRA and Vivian Abenshushan, Dora Bartilotti, and Leonardo Aranda’s Permanente obra negra gives us a glimpse into the recent past to understand why the impetus to make hybrid books continues to be creatively current yet commercially unfulfilled.

Élika Ortega is an assistant professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on digital literature and media, cultural hybridity, books, and independent publishing. She recently co-edited special issue on the intersection of digital humanities and Spanish and Portuguese studies for Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (Summer 2021), and for Hispania (December 2021). Élika is currently writing Binding Media: Print-Digital literature 1980s-2020, her monograph investigating hybrid works of literature from Argentina to Canada.

Please direct any questions to Dr. Amanda Wyatt Visconti, Managing Director of the Scholars’ Lab, at abv6x@virginia.edu.