JOSEPH TABBI is an American academic and literary theorist who relocated to the University of Bergen in 2019. He has made significant contributions to the field of experimental American fiction in both print and electronic media. He is the author of Cognitive Fictions (2002) and Postmodern Sublime: Technology and American Writing from Mailer to Cyberpunk (1995). He was the first scholar granted access to the William Gaddis archives, and is the author of Nobody Grew but the Business: On the Life and Work of William Gaddis (2015). He edited The Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature (2017), and Post-Digital: Dialogues and Debates from electronic book review (2020). He continues to co-edit the scholarly journal electronic book review (ebr), which he founded in the mid-1990s with Mark Amerika and Anne Burdick.

Tabbi is also a founding member and Director of the Consortium on Electronic Literature (CELL). A National Endowment for the Humanities grant (2014) enabled member literary databases worldwide to build a search engine for interoperability. An earlier, startup grant from the NEH, for the development of the Electronic Literature Directory, provided a model for later databases worldwide that are now a part of the Consortium. A “manifesto” for the project can be found at www.cellproject.net.

His Cambridge Introduction to Literary Posthumanism is scheduled for publication in the autumn of 2024.

Academic monograph

• Tabbi, Joseph Paul (2024). Cambridge Introduction to Literary Posthumanism. (external link)

Academic article

• Torres, Rui; Rettberg, Scott Robert; Rettberg, Jill Walker et al. (2023). Digital Narratives — Theories, Criticism(s), Achievements: Introduction. (external link)
• Tabbi, Joseph Paul (2017). Relocating the Literary: In Networks, Knowledge Bases, Global Systems, Material, and Mental Environments . (external link)

Interview

• Tabbi, Joseph Paul; Rettberg, Scott Robert (2023). Joseph Tabbi on the Electronic Book Review, Research Infrastructure, and Electronic Literature. (external link)

Academic chapter/article/Conference paper

• Tabbi, Joseph Paul (2021). Is Writing All Over, or Just Dispersed? Essayism in Trina: A Design Fiction. (external link)
• Tabbi, Joseph (2019). Digital Readings. (external link)

Academic anthology/Conference proceedings

• Tabbi, Joseph Paul (2020). Post-Digital: Dialogues and debates from Electronic Book Review (Volume 2). (external link)
• Tabbi, Joseph; Amerika, Mark; Benzon, Kiki et al. (2020). Post-digital : Dialogues and debates from electronic book review : volume 1. (external link)
• Tabbi, Joseph (2017). The Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature. (external link)

Feature article

• Tabbi, Joseph Paul (2009). On Reading 300 Works of Electronic Literature: Preliminary Reflections. (external link)

See a complete overview of publications in Cristin.

Books

Cambridge Introduction to Literary Posthumanism. 

Cambridge University Press, 2024.

 

Nobody Grew but the Business: On the Life and Work of William Gaddis.

Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015.

2015 Midlands Award for Biography.

 

Cognitive Fictions. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.

 

Postmodern Sublime: Technology and American Writing from Mailer to Cyberpunk.

Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.

 

Edited essay collections

Post-Digital: Dialogues and Debates from the electronic book review (2 volumes);

 Bloomsbury Press, London and New York, 2020.

 

Handbook of Electronic Literature.

London and New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2017.

2018 N Katherine Hayles Award for Critical Writing  and Choice Outstanding Academic Title

 

Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World-System

Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 2007: co-editor and sole author of introduction.

 

Reading Matters: Narrative in the New Media Ecology

Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997: co-editor with Michael Wutz and co-author of introduction.