Alex Saum-Pascual is a (digital) poet, and professor. She is author of #Postweb! Crear con la máquina y en la red (Iberoamericana-Vervuert 2018) and numerous articles, special issues, and book chapters on digital media and literature in the Spanish-speaking world, being featured in The Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, The Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, and Digital Humanities Quarterly, among others. Her work has been supported by fellowships and grants from UC Berkeley's Hellman Fund, the Peder Sather Center for Advance Studies, the Townsend Center for the Humanities, The Arts Research Center, and the Mellon Foundation.
Her digital artwork and poetry have been exhibited in galleries and art festivals internationally and have been studied in monographs such as Mujeres poetas del mundo digital (2020), and Ciberfeminismos: Tecnotextualidades y transgéneros (2023), and has been anthologized in the Electronic Literature Collection Vol. 4 (2022). Currently, she is Associate Professor of Contemporary Spanish Literature and New Media at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also part of the Executive Committee of the Berkeley Center for New Media(link is external), co-director of Spanish Studies at the Institute of European Studies(link is external)at UC Berkeley, and the board of directors of the Electronic Literature Organization(link is external). She is also series editor of the Electronic Literature series at Bloomsbury(link is external)Academic Press, and part of the Editorial Collective of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies(link is external).
Her research expands on the relationship between literature and digital technologies from different perspectives and expanding throughout Spain and the Americas. Her book #Postweb! Crear con la máquina y en la Red (Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2018) analyzes the influence of electronic writing technologies on both printed and born-digital books, exploring what this means for literary experimentalism, and for the prevalence of the "Transition" literary canon in Spain, in decay since the financial and institutional crisis of 2002 and 2008.
She has edited two special issues engaging Spain and global digital writing technologies. Together with Scott Rettberg, Saum-Pascual co-edited Electronic Literature [Frame]works for the Creative Digital Humanities (electronic book review, 2020) exploring the evolving relationship between electronic literature and the digital humanities in Europe, North and South America. With Álvaro Llosa, she co-edited Futuros: imaginarios, redes y prácticas digitales en la cultura española. Un catálogo de posibles (Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 2023), gathering “digital” proposals that challenge key questions of Spain’s cultural formation, its national identities and territories, as well as Spain’s history and memory.
In her new book project, Earthy Algorithms: A Materialist Reading of Digital Literature (forthcoming, SUNY UP 2026), Prof. Saum-Pascual undoes the fallacy of digital immateriality to reveal instead the very earthy infrastructures (minerals, extraction, energy, labor and waste) that sustain the contemporary digital world. Through close readings of digital artworks, literature, and cultural practices from Spain, Latin America, and its diasporas, the book traces how old histories of colonialism, capitalist abstraction, and environmental damage continue to shape the algorithmic present powering automatic writing, blockchain and AI. Drawing from media studies, environmental studies, literary analysis, and decolonial thought, Earthy Algorithms offers an original materialist framework for understanding digital culture under the current ecological crisis. Yet the book also pushes against the limits of conventional academic prose: written through poetic fabulation, it moves playfully between theory, criticism, and other kinds of imagination.
Prof. Saum-Pascual teaches a broad range of undergraduate and graduate courses on media in the Hispanic world, and literature (digital or not) combining the study of literary texts with other cultural products of the 20th and 21st centuries. She has taught courses focusing on digital materiality in the Americas; exploring the role of digital media on the construction of the Spanish imaginary; the importance of television shows and their adaptation of social realists works; and the role of theater, popular music, or social media, as means of protest and artistic expression in Spain and Latin America. She is particularly keen in the study of electronic literature (digital prose and poetry) as it relates to the current climate crisies, which she has taught at all levels, graduate and undergraduate. She also enjoys teaching courses on creative writing with digital tools and the intersection of writing environments and generative AI.
By applying a methodological scope coming from the fields of New Media and Electronic Literature, Saum-Pascual offers a unique contribution to the field of Digital Humanities and Media Studies in Spanish, and to transatlantic literary and cultural studies overall.
Learn more at alexsaum.com(link is external) and access her artwork here.
Selected Academic Publications
- #Postweb! Crear con la máquina y en la red. Madrid: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2018.
This book examines the role of digital technologies in recent literary experimentation in Spain over the last two decades. It studies print books whose digital conception has left a traceable mark (recent novels and poetry by Vicente Luis Mora, Jorge Carrión, Agustín Fernández Mallo, Robert Juan Cantavella and Javier Fernández), as well as born-digital objects living online (Belén Gache’s digital poetry, blog novels, and virtual performances, and Doménico Chiappe’s hypertextual novels). The book argues that, apart from being a sign of our present time, digital media changes the way writers relate to the past, history, and their record. In the Spanish case, digital experimentation with literary forms (and other forms of memory) is conceptualized as a rejection of the prevalent literary canon, in decay since the financial and institutional crisis of 2008.
- Peer-Reviewed Edited Collections
Futuros: imaginarios, redes y prácticas digitales en la cultura española. Un catálogo de posibles. Alex Saum-Pascual and Álvaro Llosa Sanz Eds. Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies. 24.1 (2023)
Electronic Literature [Frame]works for the Creative Digital Humanities. Alex Saum-Pascual and Scott Rettberg Eds. Electronic Book Review. August 2020-December 2020
- Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals
"Material Algorithms: Bridging the Gap between the Cloud and the Ground in Latin American Digital Literature". Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 34.3 (2025): 389–412.
“Futuros: imaginarios, redes y prácticas digitales en la cultura española. Un catálogo de posibles.” Alex Saum-Pascual and Álvaro Llosa Sanz Eds. Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies. 24.1 (2023): 1-8.
“Literatura digital para el fin del mundo: ecología y algoritmos en el Capitaloceno.” Diálogos Latinoamericanos, 31 (2022): 93–109.
“Memory Traces: Printed Electronic Literature as a Site of Remembrance.” Comparative Literature Studies, 57.1 (2020): 69-94
“Digital Creativity as Critical Material Thinking: The Disruptive Potential of Electronic Literature.” Electronic Book Review. August 2020. Web.
“Introduction: Electronic Literature as a Framework for the Digital Humanities.” Electronic Book Review. August 2020. Co-authored with Scott Rettberg. Web.
“Is Third Generation Literature Postweb Literature? And Why Should We Care?” Electronic Book Review. May 2020. Web.
“Fragmentation and the Digital City: An Analysis of Vicente Luis Mora’s Circular 07. Las afueras.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 53.2 (2019): 605-632
“Teaching Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities.” Digital Humanities Quarterly, 11.3 (2017): 1-14
“Alternativas a la (ciencia) ficción en España: Dos ejemplos de literatura electrónica en formato impreso.” Letras Hispanas, 11 (2015): 239-259
“Carmen Martín Gaite: Una provocación desde la cultura digital.” Hispania, 98.4 (2015): 674-675
“Literatura española post-web: Al borde de lo virtual, lo material y la historia. El caso de Jordi Carrión.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, 18 (2014): 115-133
“La poética de la Nocilla: Transmedia Poetics in Agustín Fernández Mallo’s Complete Works.” Caracteres. Estudios culturales y críticos de la esfera digital, 3.1 (2014): 81-99
“Desalmados. Hipertextos y biopolítica en el mundo de la webserie española.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 13.1 (2012): 19-38. Co-authored with Freya Schiwy
“Él, ella y él: Análisis de la inversión de los roles masculino y femenino en ‘Las caras de la medalla’ y ‘Ciao, Verona’ de Julio Cortázar.” Espéculo. Revista de estudios literarios, 40 (November, 2008): 1-18
- Book Chapters/Essays in Peer-Reviewed Edited Collections
“Algorithms, the Earth and the Spanish State: The Politics of Making Digital Art.” The Routledge Companion to Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Spain: Ideas, Practices, Imaginings. Elena Delgado and Eduardo Ledesma Eds. Routledge, 2025. 571-585
“El ensayo material: Sobre la práctica de una escritura digital [femenina].” Voces encendidas: Mujer, arte y tecnología. María Goicoechea and Laura Sánchez Eds. Madrid: Editorial CSIC, 2023. 209-230
“Corporal y corporativa: sobre Corporate Poetry de Alex Saum.” Ciberfeminismos, tecnotextualidades y transgéneros. Literatura digital en español escrita por mujeres. Isabel Navas Ocaña y Dolores Romero López Eds. Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid UP, 2023. 219-241
“Materialidad digital, algoritmos y otras abstracciones modernas.” Escrituras hispánicas desde el exocanon. Daniel Escandell Ed. Madrid: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2022. 23-35
“On Bodies, Surveys, Virus and Rooms. Enter Corporate Poetry.” Texts of Discomfort: Interactive Storytelling Art. Jim Pope and María Reyes Eds. Carnegie Mellon ETC Press, 2021. 250-281.
“Toys and Toons: From Hispanic Literary Traditions to a Global E-Lit Landscape.” Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms, and Practices. Dene Grigar and James O’Sullivan Eds. Bloomsbury, 2021. 43-53
“As We May Think/ Escribir es escribir como si escribiéramos en presente” in Fobias – Fonias – Fagias. Escritas Experimentais e Eletrónicas Ibero-Afro-Latinoamericanas. Claudia Kozak and Rui Torres Eds. [Coleçao Cibertextualidades]. Porto: Publicaçoes Universidade Fernando Pessoa, 2019. 176-183
“Por qué Dolerse. La relevancia de un texto híbrido.” Dolerse, textos desde un país herido/ Condolerse. By Cristina Rivera Garza. México DF: Sur+ Ediciones, 2015. 97-103
Artwork & Poetry
See artist portfolio at alexsaum.com/artwork/(link is external) and learn about any shows and exhibitions at alexsaum.com/c-v/(link is external).