Digital Modernism

While most critical studies of born-digital literature celebrate it as a postmodern art form with roots in contemporary technologies and social interactions, Digital Modernism provides an alternative genealogy. Grounding her argument in literary history, media studies, and the practice of close-reading, Jessica Pressman pairs modernist works by Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and Bob Brown, with major digital works like William Poundstone's Project for the Tachistoscope {Bottomless Pit}, Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries's Dakota, and Judd Morrissey's The Jew's Daughter to demonstrate how the modernist movement of the 1920s and 1930s laid the groundwork for the innovations of electronic literature. Accordingly, Digital Modernism makes the case for considering these digital creations as "literature" and argues for the value of reading them carefully, closely, and within literary history.


"A pioneering study with brilliant readings of important works of digital literature, Digital Modernism is a landmark work of literary criticism, a must-read for anyone interested in how contemporary literature fares in the digital domain."-N. Katherine Hayles, author of How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis

"In this lucid, informed, and consequential book, Jessica Pressman enacts the strategy she theorizes. To argue that writing moves forward by looking back, she repurposes print-based critical practices of close reading to parse a pixel-based creativity she calls 'digital modernism.' This exhilarating spin draws McLuhan, Pound, and Joyce into the contemporary making of the new." -Adalaide Morris, author of New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories

"Pressman's wonderfully elegant close readings show us how to engage some of the most complex creative works of our moment, even as they help us see literary modernism anew. A book for both established scholars and a new generation of critics, Digital Modernism superbly prescribes the terms for the study of electronic literature."-Rita Raley, author of Tactical Media