Class Schedule (including report links and reporters’ names)
Introduction: The Interdisciplinary History of the Book
September 3: Course Overview
- Syllabus Review
- Introductions & Questionnaire
- Brainstorming/mapping: Literacy, Technology, Culture
- Films: Medieval Help Desk, Old Skool Printing, & The Machine is Us/ing Us
- Introduction to Blogger and Google Docs
September 10: What is Book History?
- Leslie Hawsom, Old Books & New Histories (purchased textbook), 1-40, 46-64, 72-77
Email instructor by today’s date with three choices of oral report topics
Blog on reading or on a significant experience with literacy and technology
Module I: Orality and Early Writing
September 17: We Are What We Speak
- Robert Darnton, “Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose” (required: pgs 9-10, 14-42, 53-65; the rest is optional) (Bb)
- Lawrence Levine, “The Meaning of Slave Tales” (Bb)
- Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Google Books or WSU e-book), pgs. 62-96
- Film in class: Printing Transforms Knowledge (part 1)
Reports:
- The Underground Railroad, Quilts & Orality (Stephanie)
- Storytelling: the Art of Knowledge
- Aaron Shepard’s Storytelling Page (read all of the “Tell a Story!” pages and on the “Inside Story” page, link to “Researching the Folktale” and “The Art of Retelling”) (Stephen)
Blog on readings
September 24: Put it in Writing
- Roger Chartier, “The Practical Impact of Writing” (Bb)
- John Noble Wilford, “Who Began Writing? Many Theories, Few Answers” (New York Times)
- Individualized reading assignment: All readings can be accessed on Blackboard by Friday 9/18. Be able to explain to your classmates in about five minutes what the main ideas are of the essay you selected (you’ll have a few minutes to confer with your fellow readers before doing so). This is casual and ungraded, not a formal presentation—there is no written component and you won’t leave your desk. Handouts with bulleted information, notes or images would be wonderful, but are definitely optional. If you were absent on 9/17 I assigned you to a text.
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- Alexander Marshack, “The Art and Symbol of Ice Age Man” (Vee, Kellie, Greg)
- Eleanor Robson, “The Clay Tablet Book in Sumer, Assyria, and Babylonia” (Anthony, Tahreem, Richard)
- Cornelia Roemer, “The Papyrus Roll in Egypt, Greece and Rome” (Ian, Elizabeth, Victoria)
- Emile Schrijiver, “The Hebraic Book” (Sarah, Julianne, Irina)
- J.S. Edgren, “China” (Troy, Tiffany, Keith)
- D. F. McKenzie , “The Sociology of a Text: Orality, Literacy and Print in Early New Zealand” (Michael, Sheila)
- Jonathan M. Bloom, “The Spread of Papermaking Across the Islamic Lands” (Scott, Nasryn, Ghyath)
- Jonathan M. Bloom, “Paper and Books,” (Tanya, Stephanie, Nancy)
- Film in class: The Dead Sea Scrolls
Reports:
- Paper, Leather, Clay and Stone (Ghyath)
- Survivor: The History of the Library (Julianne)
- The American Museum of Papermaking (focus on the pages under “Collection”)
- The Aberdeen Bestiary Project
Blog on readings
Module II: The Press of Literacy
October 1: Manuscript Cultures and the Rise of Reading
- [catch up on individualized readings, reports and Noble reading from last week]
- Roger Chartier, “The Practical Impact of Writing” (Bb)
- Johannes Trithemius, selection from “In Praise of Scribes” (Bb) (click here for a picture of the original)
- Film in class: Printing Transforms Knowledge (part 2)
Blog on readings
October 8: The Print Revolution
- Ronald Deibert, Parchment, Printing and Hypermedia, Chapters 2-4 (print book is available in library reserves; it can be accessed as an e-book; scanned pages are on Bb, or buy online cheap)
- Brief History of Type (read all five sections) & Who Shot the Serif? (I Love Typography blog)
- Films in class: Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press & The Atlas of Early Printing
Reports:
- A History of Wood Engraving (Victoria)
Blog on readings
October 15: Literary Technologies, A Case Study
- David Kastan, Shakespeare and the Book, 1-49 ( Bb)
- Stallybrass, Chartier, Mowery and Wolfe, “Hamlet’s Tables and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England” (Bb)
Reports:
- The Walt Whitman Archive (Keith)
- Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Anthony)
- Colonization and Print in the Americas (Sarah)
Blog on research paper topic
October 22: Print Economies
- John Feather, “Copyright and the Creation of Literary Property” (Bb)
- John Brewer, “Authors, Publishers and the Making of Literary Culture” (Bb)
- Lisa Maruca, Political Propriety and Feminine Property: Women in the Eighteenth-Century Text Trades (WSU lib. database or Bb)
- Film in class: Good Copy, Bad Copy and Lawrence Lessig on Google Books
Reports:
- Magazine Covers and Cover Lines (Nasryn)
- The History of Chinese Bookbinding (Troy)
- Victorian Periodicals and the Empire (Elizabeth)
Blog on readings or research sources
October 29: Literacy, Learning, Politics and Power
- C. H. Knoblauch, “Literacy and the Politics of Education” (Bb)
- Patricia Crain, “New Histories of Literacy” (Bb)
- John Buschman, “Information Literacy, ‘New’ Literacies, and Literacy” (Bb)
- Film in class: Helvetica
Reports:
Blog: formal research paper prospectus and preliminary bibliography
November 5: Histories and Literacies
- E. Jennifer Monaghan, “Literacy Instruction and Gender in Colonial New England” (Bb)
- Dana Nelson Salvino, “The Word in Black and White” (Bb)
- Louis Menand, “Cat People” (New Yorker)
Reports:
Blog on readings or research sources
Module III: Digital Culture & the New Literacy Mash-up
November 12: The End of the Book?
- National Endowment for the Arts, Reading at Risk and Reading on the Rise (NEA.gov)
- Malcolm Gladwell, “The Social Life of Paper” (New Yorker)
- Ted Striphas, The Late Age of Print, Chapter One only
- Robert Darnton, “The Library in the New Age” (New York Review of Books)
- Film in class: Noteboek
Reports:
- “The Future of Reading” (Michel)
- “How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write ” & “How the Kindle Will Change the World” (Tanaz)
- Is it a Book?
- The Center for Book Arts exhibition on “Book Arts in the USA”
Blog on readings or research sources
Research paper outline, sketch or map due by EMAIL
November 19: Literacy 2.0
- Clay Shirky, Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags (author’s website)
- Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (The Atlantic)
- Sam Anderson, “In Defense of Distraction” (New York Magazine)
- David Runciman, “Like Boiling a Frog” (London Review of Books) OR Nicholson Baker, “The Charms of Wikipedia” (New York Review of Books)
- Emily Nussbaum, Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy (New York Magazine) OR Vanessa Grigoriadis, Do You Own Facebook? Or Does Facebook Own You? (New York Magazine)
- Greg Downey, Fear of Twitter (Neuroanthropology blog)
- Films in class: Google Docs in Plain English, This is Your Brain on Google, Cobert Report on “The Word: Wikiality,” & Epic 2014
Reports:
- “Old Thinking Permeates Major Journalism School” & “NYU Professor Stifles Blogging, Twittering by Journalism Student” & “Some Dubious Links for PBS.org” (start at the subhead that says “The Unidentified ‘Embedded’ Blogger”) (Vee)
- “Wikipedia and Women”
- Twitter Literacy, The Twitter Experiment at UT Dallas and video (Tiffany)
- Teaching English in Second Life
Blog on readings or research sources
November 26
No class. Enjoy your holiday.
December 3: Gaming Literacy
- James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy, Chapter Two (Bb)
- Clive Thompson, “The Xbox Auteurs” (New York Times)
- Leo Berkeley, “Situating Machinima in the New Mediascape” (Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society)
- Films in class: ”The Strangerhood” and “Ending with Andre”
Reports:
- Computers in Education: A Brief History (Kellie)
- An Alternative View on Why, When and How Computers Should Be Used in Education (Sheila)
- “Game Master” & Gaming: 2012 video (on Spore) (Ian)
- GAM3R 7H3ORY (read, at a minimum, “About this Project” and the entire section AGONY)
Research paper draft uploaded on Google Documents (see “Getting Started with Google Docs” for instructions
December 10: Course Wrap Up
- James A. Dewar, “The Information Age and the Printing Press: Looking Backward to See Ahead” (The RAND Corporation)
- Jorge Borges, “The Library of Babel“
- Film in class: 1984
Reports:
- “Borges, The Library of Babel and the Internet”
- “Is the Internet the Harbinger of Orwell’s Nightmares?” and “Orwellian Indeed” (Scott)
Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) administered
Comment on at least three classmates’ papers
December 17
Final revisions due. Have a great winter break!
[...] Maruka & HotBook, Class Schedule: History of the Book: Literacy, Technology, Culture Get a whole semester’s worth of reading on reading! Some fascinating links to understanding books [...]