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From Print to Digital: Technologies of the Word, 1450-Present >> Content Detail



Study Materials



Readings

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This section features the assigned readings and required and recommended texts for the course. Readings by session are available below.



Required Texts


Amazon logo Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York, NY: Menthuen, 1982. ISBN: 9780416713701.

Amazon logo Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780521258586.

Amazon logo Gitelman, Lisa. Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780804732703.

Amazon logo Long, Elizabeth. Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780226492612.

Amazon logo Boczkowski, Pablo. Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780262025591.



Recommended Texts


Amazon logo Hunt, Lynn, Thomas R. Martin, Barbara H. Rosenwein, R. Po-Chia Hsia, and Bonnie G. Smith. The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000. ISBN: 9780312183707.



Readings by Session



LEC #TopicsREADINGS
1Introduction: The Perpetually Imminent Demise of the BookMurphy, Priscilla Coit. "Books Are Dead, Long Live Books." Cambridge, MA: MIT Communications Forum, 1999.

Amazon logo Mitchell, William. "Homer to Home Page: Designing Digital Books." City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, February 1996. ISBN: 9780262631761.
2Theorizing Orality and LiteracyAmazon logo Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York, NY: Menthuen, 1982, pp. 1-138 and 156-179. ISBN: 9780416713701.

Optional

Amazon logo McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994, pp. 3-73. ISBN: 9780262631594.
3Was There a "Printing Revolution"?Amazon logo Clancy, Michael T. "Looking Back From the Invention of Printing." In Literacy in Historical Perspective. Edited by Daniel P. Resnick. Washington, DC: Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, pp. 7-22. ISBN: 9780844404103.

Amazon logo Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 3-90. ISBN: 9780521258586.

Grafton, Anthony T. "The Importance of Being Printed." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 11 (Autumn 1980): 265-286.

Tan, Philip. "Little Leadings." 1998 (Student cyber-fiction set in a sixteenth-century printshop).

Video: "The Renaissance Book." (To be shown in class).

The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Printing

The Lindisfarne Gospels (Digital reproduction of a famous medieval manuscript.)

Oxford Medieval Manuscript Collection (Online manuscript collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, UK.)
4English ChapbooksAmazon logo Spufford, Margaret. Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England. Reprint ed. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 1-82 and 156-193. ISBN: 9780521312189.

Amazon logo Thompson, Roger, ed. Samuel Pepys' Penny Merriments. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1977, pp. 102-113 and 247-263. ISBN: 9780231042802.

Read a seventeenth-century chapbook at Harvard's Houghton Library or a work in the Early English Books Online (EEBO) database. Details to be provided in class.

Hausman, Nicholas. Chapbook Analysis. (Student analysis of Guy of Warwick)
5A Visit to the Burndy LibraryThorndike, Lynn, ed. The Sphere of Sacrobosco and Its Commentators. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1949, pp. 118-123.

Grafton, Anthony. "Introduction to the AHR Forum: How Revolutionary Was the Print Revolution?" American Historical Review 107 (February 2002): 84-86.

Eisenstein, Elizabeth. "An Unacknowledged Revolution Revisited." American Historical Review 107 (February 2002): 87-105.

Johns, Adrian. "How to Acknowledge a Revolution." American Historical Review 107 (February 2002): 106-125.

Eisenstein, Elizabeth. "Reply." American Historical Review 107 (February 2002): 126-128.

Printing: Renaissance and Reformation (Examples of late manuscript and early print culture.)

Burndy Library (MIT)

Optional

Amazon logo Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 185-252. ISBN: 9780521258586.
6Critiquing Early Printing AssignmentsIn-class exercises.

Early English Books Online (EEBO)

Houghton Library (Harvard)
7TypesettingA Visit to the Bow and Arrow Press at Adams House, Harvard University.

Read about the press in The Harvard Gazette (2002) and The Harvard Crimson (2006)
8An Alternative to the Technologized Word: The Inkan Khipu (Guest: Prof. Gary Urton, Anthropology, Harvard)Amazon logo Urton, Gary. Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records. 1st ed. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2003, pp. 1-88. ISBN: 9780292785397.

Conklin, William J. "A Khipu Information String Theory." In Narrative Threads: Accounting and Recounting in Andean Khipu. Edited by Jeffrey Quilter and Gary Urton. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002, pp. 53-86.

The Khipu Database Project
9The Technologized Word in the Nineteenth CenturyAmazon logo Gitelman, Lisa. Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780804732703.
10Consultations with Instructor
11Reading Communities TodayAmazon logo Long, Elizabeth. Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780226492612.

Houston Book Club

Oprah's Book Club
12Reading OnlineAmazon logo Boczkowski, Pablo. Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780262025591.

New York Times Technology Section online

The Houston Chronicle "Virtual Voyager."

New Jersey Online's Community Connection
13ConclusionAmazon logo Salomon, Frank. The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004, pp. 209-236 and 292-293. ISBN: 9780822333791.

 








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