Recent Lecture: “Technological Imperialism and Digital Writing”

spectrums of dh poster

On January 15, 2021 I gave an invited lecture as part of McGill University’s Spectrums of DH lecture series. Here’s the abstract for my talk:

In my talk I will offer an exploration of how the development, distribution, and access to digital technologies have replicated imperialist and colonialist practices of the past and have led to an unequal development of digital writing across the world. I will discuss how the development of electronic literature as a field has happened in privileged academic spaces with institutional resources, research investment, and prestige economies that favor wealthy countries and replicate imperialistic relationships with elit created and researched in the rest of the world. I will conclude by offering some ideas on how we can help decolonize and seek more equitable development of the field.

You can see the lecture here, which, including a great Q&A, lasts 1:11.

And here is the slideshow:

Huge thanks to Dr. Cecily Raynor and the McGill DH team for organizing this lecture series and inviting me to be a part of it!

By Leonardo Flores

Professor Leonardo Flores is Chair of the English Department at Appalachian State University. His research areas are electronic literature, with a focus on e-poetry, digital writing, and the history and strategic growth of the field. He’s known for I ♥ E-Poetry, the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 3, “Third Generation Electronic Literature” and the Antología Lit(e)Lat, Volume 1. He is a member of the MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on AI and Writing. For more information on his current work, visit leonardoflores.net.