Digital Culture Welcomes our 2012/13 Fulbright Scholar, Leonardo Flores

"The Digital Culture program at UiB is an important teaching and research hub in Electronic Literature and I'm excited about the prospect of dedicating a year completely focused on my specialization," Flores tells us just a few days after his arrival. He is looking forwards to getting to know his new students and colleagues. 

Flores' speciality is electronic literature and in particular e-poetry. While in Bergen, he will teach undergraduate and graduate students. In the autumn semester of 2012 he will teach DIKULT203: Electronic literature and a unit on identity online in DIKULT106. In the spring, he will teach the Masters level course DIKULT303: Digital Media Aesthetics, and co-teach the introductory course DIKULT103: Digital Genres: Digital Art, Electronic Literature, and Computer Games.

In addition, Flores will work with the Electronic Literature Research Group, in particular taking part in research and development of the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base. In his research proposal for the year , Flores describes himself as a "technoformalist", and writes:

I have studied, taught, and presented on topics as diverse as comic books and graphic novels, serial literature, film, modern poetry, visual poetry traditions, artists’ books, and electronic literature. In all of these areas, Ihave been fascinated by how meaning can be constructed through the material characteristics of each medium, paying close attention to the linguistic, graphical, aural, and behavioral aspects of texts in order to make insightful readings of the works I encounter, study, and teach.  

Flores' primary research project this year will be to develop a publishable archive of development materials for Jim Andrews' work Arteroids, as well as a critical edition of the work. Arteroids is a poem that uses a game engine similar to the 1979 Atari arcade game Asteroids, and was also analyzed in Flores' dissertation. You can read a brief description of Arteroids at Flores' daily blog, I ♥ E-Poetry, where he posts hundred word or more readings of works of electronic poetry every single day. 

As associate dean of Assessment and Learning Technologies at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico, Flores also has a lot of experience with integrating technology into learning environments.

Flores has already met some of his colleagues for the year, and looks forwards to meeting more. He can be contacted at Leonardo.Flores@lle.uib.no or through his professional blog or on Twitter. 

This is the second year the Digital Culture group has been fortunate enough to host a full year Fulbright Scholar. One great advantage of having a scholar here teaching for a full year is the way we are able to give students a truly international education. While here, Fulbright scholars follow the existing UiB course plans, but of course they bring with them their home experience, background and teaching methods. This broadening of our students learning experience is very valuable. The first two years have been funded through the ELMCIP project, and we have confirmed that we will continue the program for at least one more iteration. 

Flores brings with him his wife and their two children, who are 2 and 5 years old.