Born Digital: Towards A Glossary of Digital Narrative

• Master's students (MA/MEd.) and Ph.D. candidates, that are enrolled at the university of Stuttgart  or at the university of Bergen in the Literary Studies and/or Digital Humanities departments and are interested in electronic literatures and digital narratives. Additionally they should be interested in contributing to the Living Glossary for Digital Narrative.
  

Students that are already working on their Master or Ph.D. theses are also welcome to apply.

• Exchange semester 5 months
• Research stays at least 3 months and maximum 5 months

Successful applicants will be granted a Baden-Württemberg stipend of 1.100,- euro/month during their stay in Bergen. The stipend is financed by the Baden Württemberg Stiftung (https://www.bw-stipendium.de/de/).

Successful applicants will have the opportunity to contribute to the Living Glossary of Digital Narratives, an online, open-access, dictionary on electronic literature.

At the university of Bergen:

• Scholarship holders can take classes by the department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies (https://www.uib.no/en/lle/courses ). They will also be granted access to the resources of the Center for Digital Narrative (https://www.uib.no/en/cdn) and they can partake in events and research colloquims organized by the Center. Furthermore attendance at the (online) colloquiums and meetings of the Born Digital projects is expected.
  

At the university of Stuttgart:

• At Stuttgart University, students will have the opportunity to participate in courses offered in English and American Studies (https://www.ilw.uni-stuttgart.de/en/departments/english-literatures/teaching/), which are all taught in English, and be integrated in events organised by the Born Digital research group, which will be jointly established by Bergen and Stuttgart.Advanced MA/MEd students working on their research theses will have access to research colloquia, be able to present their projects in joint (online) colloquia and workshops, and be co-supervised by colleagues from Stuttgart.

• Letter of motivation (maximum 2 pages), which should state your interest for electronic literatures.
• CV
• Recent transcript of records
  

All applications should be in English. Please send your application documents to  sibylle.baumbach@ilw.uni-stuttgart.de in one .pdf file.

Deadline for applications for stays in 2025/2026 is February 04, 2025.

Further information about the project and the application for a stipend can be found here:

If you have further questions please contact Prof. Sibylle Baumbach
(sibylle.baumbach@ilw.uni-stuttgart.de).

The Baden-Württemberg-STIPENDIUM supports the international exchange of students and vocationally qualified people. Since 2001, it has enabled more than 28,000 young people from Baden-Württemberg to gain experience abroad and allowed scholarship holders from other countries to visit Baden-Württemberg. Approximately 1,500 young people receive a Baden-Württemberg-STIPENDIUM each year.

Baden-Württemberg-STIPENDIUM for University Cooperations – BWS plus

With the Baden-Württemberg-STIPENDIUM for University Cooperations – BWS plus, the Baden-Württemberg Stiftung supports joint projects between universities from Baden-Württemberg and their international partners.The programme is endowed with approximately 1 million Euros annually. Since 2011, more than 130 BWS plus projects have been supported at universities in Baden-Württemberg.

http://www.bw-stipendium.de/

Summer semester 2024

Winter semester 2024

 
Summer semester 2025

advocates a vital Baden-Württemberg with a high quality of life for all its residents. It helps pave the way for advanced technological progress, high quality education, and a responsible relationship with fellow human beings. The Baden-Württemberg Stiftung is one of the major foundations in Germany. It is the only foundation which exclusively and above party lines invests in the future of the state of Baden-Württemberg – and thus in the future of its citizens.

http://www.bwstiftung.de/

Gabriele de Seta (University of Bergen) kicked of Weird Stories & Wicked Communities with his keynote “On entitification: P-zombies, shoggoths, stochastic parrots and Waluigis”. In the focus were the treatment and conceptualisation of chat-bots as entities in the space of online discussion.

The panel “Technological Anxiety” included two presentations. Hanna Hellesø Lauvli’s (University of Bergen) input “From Spam to Spirit: Dead Internet Theory, Creative Practice, and the Algorithmic Self” on the evolution of spam, AI-slob and the end of useful, true or human-generated content was followed by Marianne Gunderson’s (University of Bergen) “‘Don’t worry about formalities’: Prompting as an affective genre,” which showcased her research into the so-called Eigenprompt. The Eigenprompt allows users to customize the content and style of automatically generated output, oftentimes aiming for a sarcastic imagination of a millenial’s tonality.

Following, Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang (Sydneshaugen Skole) gave his talk “The Rhethoric of Space in African Digital Literature”. Opoku-Agyemang demonstrated how authors of African Digital Literature reflect on the interplay of urban and rural spaces as well as overcome those categories and find new perspectives.

Under the umbrella of “Vernacular Creativity,” Maria Kraxenberger (University of Stuttgart) presented “Practices, Motivations, Effects of Using Online Literature Platforms: an Exploratory Survey Study”. Her research highlighted female usership, diversity in preferred genres and the double role of users as consumers and creators of online literature. During “Sims Family Sagas: Emergent Narrative Approaches to the ‘Legacy Challenge’ by Sims 2 Players” Tegan Pyke (University of Bergen) gave an introduction into narratives created predominantly by female players of the Sims 2 and the players’ interactions with their creations. Christin Walter (University of Stuttgart) closed the first workshop day with her presentation “Fanon vs. Canon: Character Centrality in Re-Imaginings of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in AU-Fanfiction”. Her preliminary findings suggest that fanfiction authors stay true to the original character dynamics even when changing spatial or temporal circumstances.

The second day started out with a peer-review workshop by Lai-Tze Fan (University of Bergen). Peer-review as an often under-represented and overlooked but also time-intensive task became the centre of attention. Fan provided attendees with helpful tips, guidelines and what to look out for when acting as peer-reviewer.

In the panel “Artificial Voices” presenters showcased how digital contexts influence the shape and meaning of communication. Lina Ruth Harder (University of Bergen) discussed how grief and a desire for closure might motivate someone to train a chat-bot on the data of a deceased relative or loved one as well as possible ethical implications in “Haunted Algorithms: Techno-Necromancy and Ghosts in the Machine”. In the talk “The ‘Weird and Wicked’ Intersection of Human and Mechanical Voices in Digital Literature” Nadja Hieber (University of Stuttgart) reflected upon how generated speech is employed by poets and what effect it might have on human listeners. Ceyda Yazici (University of Stuttgart) explored in her presentation “Shape Me: The Self-Realization of Digital Id(Entities)” different philosophical approaches for interpreting the relationship between Original Characters and their creators as well as the surrounding communities and their usage of chat-bots.

The panel “World Building” began with “Devs on Devs: Exploring Video Games about the Video Game Industry” by Daniel Johannes Rosnes (University of Bergen). He deconstructed the formula of Video Game Development Simulators and discussed how it pertains to visions of and hopes for the industry. Merve Munz (University of Stuttgart) followed with “Compu(e)ting Gods in Afşin Kum’s Kübra”, analysing the imagination of a god-like AI, its prophet and resulting cult following. In “Virtual Worlds: From Entertainment to Sociopolitical Laboratories” Svitlana Tarasova (University of Stuttgart) demonstrated how video games and their culture pick up real-world phenomena as well as surpass the medium.

The workshop ended on a high note with the launch of the Living Glossary of Digital Narratives. The LGDN aims to be a reference point for students as well as researchers and welcomes contributions by everyone interested in the crafting and study of digital narrative.