Courses:

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Seminar participants must do all required readings each week. In addition, they may wish to consult some of the supplemental readings on the list. You may wish to purchase these five books, as we will be reading most or all of them:

Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge, 2002. ISBN: 9780415281294.

Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780521277358.

Peters, Julie Stone. Theatre of the Book, 1480-1880: Print, Text, and Performance in Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780198187141.

Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780262031691.

Gitelman, Lisa. Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780804738729.

Some of you may wish to do some background reading in European and United States history. I recommend the following two textbooks:

Nash, Gary B., et al. The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society. New York: Longman, 2002. ISBNs: 9780321094322. (v. 1) and 9780321094308 (v. 2).

Hunt, Lynn, et al. The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780312183707.

SES #	TOPICS	ReaDINGS
1	Introduction
2	Framing Questions	Required Readings Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 1-155. ISBN: 9780415281294. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994 (rpt. 1964), pp. 3-73. ISBN: 9780262631594. Supplemental Readings Ong, Walter. Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958. Ibid. The Presence of the Word. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967. ISBN: 9780300099737. Ibid. Interfaces of the Word. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977. ISBN: 9780801411052. Goody, Jack, and Ian Watt. "The consequences of literacy." In Literacy in Traditional Societies. Edited by Jack Goody. London: Cambridge University Press, 1968, pp. 27-68. ISBN: 9780521073455. [Synthetic, introductory essay by Goody and Ian Watt, a literary scholar, entitled "The Consequences of Literacy", followed by a series of essays by other specialists, mostly anthropologists, on literacy in non-industrialized societies.] Ibid. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977. ISBN: 9780521292429. Ibid. The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780521339629. Ibid. The Interface Between the Written and the Oral. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780521337946. Ibid. The Power of the Written Tradition. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780252068522. Williams, Raymond. "The Technology and the Society." In Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books, 1975, pp. 9-31. Lowe, Donald M. History of Bourgeois Perception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. ISBN: 9780226494289.
3	Codex Books and Medieval Writers and Readers	Required Readings O'Donnell, James J. "From the Codex Page to the Home Page." In Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 50-70. ISBN: 9780674055452. Clanchy, Michael T. "The Technology of Writing," and "The Preservation and Use of Documents." In From Memory to Written Record. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993, pp. 115-84. ISBN: 9780631168577. Saenger, Paul. "Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and Society." Viator 13 (1982): 367-414. The Lindisfarne Gospels Book of Kells Images Manuscript collection, Bodleian Library (Oxford), 11th-17th Centuries Medieval English tally sticks Supplemental Readings Roberts, C. H., and T. C. Skeat. The Birth of the Codex. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780197260241. Reynolds, L. D., and N. G. Wilson. Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780198721468. McKitterick, Rosamond. The Carolingians and the Written Word. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780521315654. Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780521429733. Saenger, Paul. Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780804726535. Stock, Brian. The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987, pp. 12-87. ISBN: 9780691102276. [Especially "Oral and Written."] Illich, Ivan, and Barry Sanders. ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780865472914. Wilford, John Noble. "String and Knot, Theory of Inca Writing." New York Times, August 12, 2003. Urton, Gary. Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780292785397.
4	Debating the Print Revolution	Required Readings Clanchy, Michael T. "Looking Back from the Invention of Printing." In Literacy in Historical Perspective. Edited by Daniel P. Resnick. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1983, pp. 7-22. ISBN: 9780844404103. Eisenstein, Elizabeth. "The Emergence of Print Culture in the West." In The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Part I. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Chap. 1-4. ISBN: 9780521447706. Johns, Adrian. "Introduction: The Book of Nature and the Nature of the Book." In The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp. 1-57. ISBN: 9780226401225. 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): 106-25. Eisenstein, Elizabeth. "Reply." American Historical Review 107 (February, 2002): 126-8. Video: "The Renaissance Book" Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publication (SHARP) Supplemental Readings Febvre, Lucien, and Henri-Jean Martin. The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800. Translated by David Gerard. New York: Verso, 1976. McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962. ISBN: 9780802060419. Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979, 2 vols. ISBN: 0521220440. [Full-scale version of Eisenstein's argument on which the abridgement above is based.] Grafton, Anthony T. "The Importance of Being Printed." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 11 (1980): 265-86. [Important early critique of Eisenstein's Printing Press as an Agent of Change.] Ibid. Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780691055442. Ibid. Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450-1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780674195448. Chartier, Roger. The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France. Translated by Lydia Cochrane. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN: 978-0691054995. Müller, Jan-Dirk. "The Body of the Book: The Media Transition From Manuscript to Print." In Materialities of Communication. Edited by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994, pp. 32-44. ISBN: 9780804722636.
5	Printing and the Scientific Revolution A Visit to the Burndy Library	Required Readings Thorndike, Lynn, ed. The Sphere of Sacrobosco and Its Commentators. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1949, pp. 118-23. Eisenstein, Elizabeth. "The Book of Nature Transformed: Printing and the Rise of Modern Science." In The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. pp. 185-252. Johns, Adrian. "Piracy and Usurpation: Natural Philosophy in the Restoration." In The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp. 444-542. ISBN: 9780226401225. Burndy Library
6	The Stage and the Page, Renaissance to Romanticism	Required Readings Peters, Julie Stone. Theatre of the Book, 1480-1880: Print, Text, and Performance in Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 1-200. ISBN: 9780199262168. Gordon, Mel. Lazzi. New York: PAJ Publications, 1983, pp. 3-23. ISBN: 9780933826694. Supplemental Readings Chartier, Roger. Publishing Drama in Early Modern Europe: The Panizzi Lectures, 1998. London: The British Library, 1999. ISBN: 9780712346351. McKenzie, D. F. "Typography and Meaning: The Case of William Congreve." In Making Meaning: 'Printers of the Mind' and Other Essays. Edited by Peter D. McDonald, and Michael F. Suarez. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. [Many of the other essays in this volume are also illuminating.] Norman, Larry F., Philippe Desan, and Richard Strier., eds. Du Spectateur au lecteur: Imprimer la scène aux XVIe et XVIIe siècle. Paris: Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2002. Norman, Larry F., ed. The Book in the Age of Theater, 1550-1750. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780943056272. Ravel, Jeffrey S. "Theater Beyond Privilege: Changes in French Play Publication, 1700-1789." Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 12 (2001): 299-347.
7	Modernity, Media Change and Meaning: The Nineteenth Century	Required Readings Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. ISBN 9780262031691. Marvin, Carolyn. "Introduction," "Locating the Body in Electrical Space and Time: Competing Authorities," and "Dazzling the Multitude: Original Media Spectacles." In When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electrical Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 3-8, 109-90. ISBN: 9780195044683. Supplemental Readings Headrick, Daniel R. When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Standage, Tom. The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's Online Pioneers. New York: Berkley Books, 1998. ISBN: 9780425171691. Nye, David E. Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880-1940. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780262640305. Jay, Martin. "The Crisis of the Ancien Scopic Régime: From the Impressionists to Bergson." In Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 149-209. ISBN: 9780520081543. Crary, Jonathan. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780262032650. Gitelman, Lisa, and Geoffrey B. Pingree., eds. New Media, 1740-1915. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780262072458. Gunning, Tom. "Re-Newing Old Technologies: Astonishment, Second Nature, and the Uncanny in Technology from the Previous Turn of the Century." In Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition. Edited by David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780262201469.
8	Vision: Early Photography (Guest: Prof. David Ciarlo, History Faculty)	Required Readings Flichy, Patrice. "Collection and Souvenir: Photography and the Gramophone." In Dynamics of Modern Communication: The Shaping and Impact of New Communication Technologies. Translated by Liz Libbrecht. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995. ISBN: 9780803978515. Morse, Samuel F. B. "Probable Effects…the Discovery of Daguerre." The Daguerreian Society Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Trachtenberg, Alan. "Prologue" In Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989, pp. 3-20. ISBN: 9780809080373. Ryan, James R. "Hunting With the Camera," "Photographing the Natives," and "Towards a Conclusion." In Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 99-182, 214-25. Library of Congress Daguerreotyoe Portraits and Views The Daguerrian Society TALBOT, William Henry Fox and Explore art Supplemental Readings Blake, Erin C. "Zograscopes, Virtual Reality, and the Mapping of Polite Society in Eighteenth-Century England." In New Media, 1740-1915. Edited by Lisa Gitelman and Geoffrey B. Pingree. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003, pp. 1-27. ISBN: 9780262072458. Wechsler, Judith. A Human Comedy: Physiognomy and Caricature in Nineteenth-Century Paris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. ISBN: 9780226877709. Terdiman, Richard. "Counter-Images: Daumier and Le Charivari." In Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985. pp. 149-97. Slater, Don. "Photography and Modern Vision: The Spectacle of 'Natural Magic'." In Visual Culture. Edited by Chris Jenks. London: Routledge, 1995, pp. 218-37. ISBN: 9780415106238. Mensel, Robert E. "'Kodakers Lying in Wait': Amateur Photography and the Right of Privacy in New York, 1885-1915." American Quarterly 43 (March, 1991): 24-45. Lee-Webb, Virginia. "Manipulated Images: European Photographs of Pacific Peoples." In Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism. Edited by Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bush. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. pp. 175-201.
9	Sound: The Making of the Phonograph	Required Readings Review Flichy chapter from 11/2. Gitelman, Lisa. Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780804738729. Supplemental Readings McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994 (rpt. 1964). ISBN: 9780262631594. [Chapters on the phonograph, the telephone, and the radio.] Flichy, Patrice. "From Trading in Goods to Trading in Souls: The Telephone," and "The Wireless Age: Radio Broadcasting." In Dynamics of Modern Communication: The Shaping and Impact of New Communication Technologies. Translated by Liz Libbrecht. London: Routledge, 1995. pp. 82-116. Umble, Dianne Zimmerman. "Sinful Network or Divine Service: Competing Meanings of the Telephone in Amish Country." In New Media, 1740-1915. Edited by Lisa Gitelman, and Geoffrey B. Pingree. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780262072458. Hilmes, Michele, and Jason Loviglio. Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio. New York: Routledge, 2001. ISBN: 9780415928212. Savage, Barbara. Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938-1948. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780807848043. Horten, Gerd. Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda During World War II. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780520207837.
10	Motion: Early Film and Its Social and Cultural Contexts	Required Readings Kern, Stephen. "Speed." In The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003, pp. 109-30. ISBN: 9780674021693. Schwartz, Vanessa. "Cinematic Spectatorship Before the Apparatus: The Public Taste for Reality in Fin-de-siècle Paris" In Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life. Edited by Leo Charney and Vanessa Schwartz. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995, pp. 297-319. Uricchio, William, and Roberta Pearson. Reframing Culture: The Case of the Vitagraph Quality Films. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 3-64, 111-59. ISBN: 9780691047744. Ross, Steven J. Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997, pp. 3-111. ISBN: 9780691032344. Supplemental Readings Schwartz, Vanessa. Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-siècle Paris. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998. [Full-length version of the argument presented in the article listed above.] Brewster, Ben, and Lea Jacobs. Theatre to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Hilmes, Michele. Hollywood and Broadcasting: From Radio to Cable. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Jenkins, Henry. "'This Fellow Keaton Seems to be the Whole Show': Buster Keaton, Interrupted Performance, and the Vaudeville Aesthetic." In Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. Edited by Andrew Horton. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 29-66. Rogin, Michael. "Making America Home: Racial Masquerade and Ethnic Assimilation in the Transition to Talking Pictures." The Journal of American History 79 (December 1992): 1050-77.
11	The Situation Today: A Digital Revolution?	Required Readings Nunberg, Geoffrey. "Farewell to the Information Age." In The Future of the Book. Edited by Geoffrey Nunberg. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996, pp. 103-38. ISBN: 9780520204515. Stille, Alexander. "Are We Losing Our Memory? Or The Museum of Obsolete Technology." In The Future of the Past. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002, pp. 299-309. ISBN: 9780374159771. In-Class exercise, instructions to be distributed prior to class meeting. Supplemental Readings Murphy, Priscilla Coit. "Books are Dead, Long Live Books." In Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition. Edited by David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780262201469. [See also the essays in the section entitled "Emerging Forms and Practices".] Turkle, Sherri. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Cook, Scott D. N. "Technological Revolutions and the Gutenberg Myth." In Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths, and Metaphors. Edited by Mark Stefik. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997, pp. 67-82. ISBN: 9780262692021. Sunstein, Cass. Republic.com. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0691070253. [See also Echo Chambers, an online supplement by the author, at Republic.com] Epstein, Jason. Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2002.
12	Presentations I
13	Presentations II