A Foreign Land?

September 18, 2009
Stacey Mason

Mark Sample of George Mason University speculates at netpoetic.com about “Teaching Electronic Literature as a Foreign Land”. (An earlier version of the essay appeared on his blog .) The essay asks, “would the same process by which a stranger in a strange land grows accustomed to foreignness and even appreciates and incorporates cultural difference into his or her own life — could that process apply to e-lit?”

The essay discusses how the six stage model of intercultural sensitivity, designed by Milton J. Bennett, seems to apply to his students’ reactions to their first encounter with electronic literature.

Student reactions to specific hypertexts are often surprising. In Reading Hypertext, Michael Joyce mentions that students often seem to dislike Mary-Kim Arnold’s masterful “Lust”, though Rich Higgason’s study of “Lust” certainly demonstrated that students have plenty of opinions on the work.

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