How Valuable is Free? Student Audiences, The Construction of Value, and The Digital Avant-Garde

Session Title: How Valuable is Free? Student Audiences, The Construction of Value, and The Digital Avant-Garde

Presenter: Dr. Aurelea Mahood, Capilano University

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Time & Date: 12:00 P.M. - 1:30 P.M., Friday, August 14, 2009

Location: Rm. C180

Session Description: Electronic literature and digital poetry alike are vibrant strands of the contemporary avant-garde.  The movements’ aesthetic experiments and exploration of new modes of representation challenge twenty-first century readers as forcefully as the work of the high modernists did readers at the beginning of the previous century.  There are, however, significant differences in the modes of distribution available to the contemporary and historical avant-garde.  Where scarcity of product in the form of limited print runs and size of audience are important aspects of any discussion examining the reception of modernism and the production of literary, critical and cultural value, any analysis of today’s electronic avant-garde has somewhat different concerns.   This paper explores perceptions of cultural, economic, and educational value in relation to literary culture and practice in the electronic age.  It is specifically concerned with student responses – critical and aesthetic – to “freely” and widely available web-based electronic literature as compared to traditional for-purchase course materials.  How does exchange value factor into the cultural and aesthetic value that students assign to courses and course texts?  How does an open system of cultural exchange, such as we have with the web-based and freely distributed CD-Rom editions of the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1 and 2, impact pedagogy and canonization?   In asking these questions, this paper draws on literary criticism and history, media studies, research on open education and pedagogy, classroom practices, and preliminary student surveys.  While literary in focus, the paper’s broader concern with the classroom and cultural politics will be of interest to everyone thinking about the university’s mission and the future of open education.