Digital Narratives Around the World
Symposium on the Global Encounters of Computing and Storytelling, University of Alberta
Date: May 18th, 2017
Call for Papers (University of Alberta faculty, researchers and graduate students)
The growing global presence of digital platforms, online connectivity and social media has come to transform and diversify the ways in which texts and narratives are accessed, engaged with and created. Bypassing traditional publishing models, both established and amateur writers and developers now have access to vast collections of tools and software allowing them to easily create and share stories and story worlds that tackle innovative, and sometimes difficult, subject matters. Similarly, most works of traditional literature are now simultaneously being published on electronic platforms or adapted for it, which is directly impacting their forms and patterns of interaction. The notion of interactivity present in many digital narratives further blurs the once rigid boundaries between producers and users; these ergodic works challenge the very notion of narrative interpretation. The democratization of social online platforms facilitating exchanges between users also direct the gaze of researchers towards quantitative research on digital narratives, drawing both on social studies and computer science methodologies to examine these publics and data exchange.
The Faculty of Arts of the University of Alberta has been involved in research at multiple intersections between digital narrativity and cultural studies, collaborating on interdisciplinary research projects both internally, and with institutions from around the world on topics such as reading and analyzing digital fiction, regional and cross-cultural game studies, and AI-managed interactive digital narrative. Research into digital narratives and their pro-sumers is conducted across a range of departments and faculties, and student interest in this subject area is growing as well.
The University of Alberta, in association with the Kule Institute for Advanced Studies (KIAS), would like to acknowledge and help further develop this interest by creating the possibility of researchers and students across campus and beyond to join forces and create a scholarly network dedicated to the support and the dissemination of cross-disciplinary research on digital narratives around the world. A first step towards the implementation of this project is a one-day symposium that will bring together researchers from the University of Alberta along with external collaborators, where participants will share their research and ideas through individual or team presentations. The objectives of this event are to identify the University of Alberta's strengths in the field and possible synergies between research groups, to establish a roadmap for the planning of future events and projects, as well as to investigate the needs and provisions for current and future graduate students in this area.
Our discussions will be enriched by advice and input from our distinguished keynote speaker and UofA alumna, Dr. Carolyn Guertin bio, Professor of Digital Technologies and Adult Education at the Ontario Institute of Technology.
Participants are invited to present on a wide range of possible topics and methodologies revolving around (de-) localized digital narratives and the cultural encounters of storytelling and computation around the world. Individual and team presentations will take the form of short talks of max. 15 min each.
Please send titles and abstracts (max. 300 words) to <ensslin@ualberta.ca> by March 31st, 2017. Notice of acceptance will be sent by April 15th, 2017.