Weekly Schedule
Week 1 January 16, 2020
Unit One: Groundwork January 16 Week One: Introduction / toward a nonlinear, nonunified theory of texts and technologies Introductions, course overview—course narrative arc and the material forms of argument, exposition, creation and interrogation with which we will engage. Read in advance: Luis Borges “In the Library of Babel” (1941) https://maskofreason.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/the-library-of-babel-by-jorge-luis-borges.pdf *for a small biographical note …
Week 2 January 23, 2020
January 23 Week Two: Disciplinary Frameworks (Media Studies, Textual Criticism, Print Culture Studies, Poetry) Textual Practice Sign ups “Media history is not a progress story–or a story of a decline of civilizations–but is continuously written anew and branded by discontinuities” Roland Barthes “The Death of the Author” 2. Roger Chartier The Order of Books, Introduction, …
Week 3 January 30, 2020
Unit Two: Early Modern – Nineteenth Century January 30 Week Three: Manuscript Text Technology 1 “The European Medieval Book” Christopher De Hamel 59-79 in The Book: A Global History PDF in Google Drive 2 Jessica Brantley “Medieval Remediations” (199-220) from Comparative Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era, eds N Katherine Hayles and …
Week 4 February 6, 2020
February 6 Week Four: Historical Narrative #1 the social revolution of the printing press James Mosley “Technologies of Print” from The Book: A Global History (PDF in Google Drive / Readings / February 6) 2. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein “Introduction” from The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. (PDF in Google Drive) 3. Roger Chartier …
Week 5 February 13, 2020
The Nineteenth Century Textual Condition / to publish or not to publish/print / Remediating Emily Dickinson We turn to the critical challenge faced by editing Emily Dickinson’s poetry. A significant number of scholars argue her work was intentionally never submitted for publication because Dickinson did not wish to submit to the technology aka conventions of …
Week 6 February 20, 2020
Mechanical Reproduction “A fundamental epistemological gap lies between symbolically coded writing (the alphabet) and the gramophonic recording, which can record as well the accompanying noise (i.e., the index) of the physically real within and outside the recorded voice (intonations, timbre, the “grain” of the voice—as defined by Roland Barthes with respect to early gramophone recordings …
Week 7 February 27, 2020
Survey of Choices as Introduction to the Major Paper Assignment: A Material Text Biography For each text, consider, what theory of textuality, what idea of language, writing, and reading is implied? What kind of text technology did the writer use to create the text? How does it enlist materiality in the making of its meaning? …
Week 8 March 5, 2020
Unit Three as Nonstandard Textualities: Tissu/Tapestry/Textile WeHistorical Narrative #2 Myth, the industrial revolution, changing patterns of orality to textuality “Textura is the name of gothic lettering in its own time. It meant “tapestry” (Marshall McLuhan Gutenberg Galaxy, 83) Kruger, Kathryn Sullivan. “Myth, History, and the Material World” and “The Semiotics of Cloth and Thetic (Re)Production” …
Week 9 March 12, 2020
SPRING BREAK MARCH (9-14) no class
Week 10 March 19, 2020
March 19 Week Ten: Wearables & Queering of Textual/Textile Production In our continued exploration of nonstandard text technologies or how we write ourselves in spaces and materials beyond the page (or screen), we turn to wearable technology. Read Susan Ryan Garments of Paradise: Wearable Discourse in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2014: “Introduction” (1-14), “The Invisible Interface” …
Week 11 March 26, 2020
Gendering of Textual/Textile Production “Interface” from Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media Lisa Nakamura “Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture” PDF Excerpt from Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace PDF in our class google drive folder This two-person TP presentation is about making connections between your own folkways and 21st century wearable …
Week 12 April 2, 2020
UNIT FOUR: Contemporary Media Ecologies The Augmented Reality Text “Introduction” in Lori Emerson. Maria Engberg Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden Jay David Bolter “Introduction: Cultural expression in augmented and mixed reality.” in Convergence: The Journal of International Research into New Media Technologies. 2014. 20.1 (3-9). Amanda Starling Gould “Invisible visualities: Augmented reality art and the …
Week 13 April 9, 2020
April 9 Week Thirteen: Database Literature Lev Manovich “Database as Symbolic Form” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/135485659900500206 “Born Digital” Stephanie Strickland Shelley Jackson https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Amerika-Online-7-3441257.html Shelley Jackson Patchwork Girl (from your USB)*Having learned last week 3/26 that no one has a mac and therefore no one has purchased or has access to Patchwork Girl, I have located the following videos …
Week 14 April 16, 2020
April 16 Week Fourteen: Vocality as Textuality Through our feminist and media archaeology approach to nonstandard textuality, we have been building a history of writing that is not exclusionary but rather is inclusionary. This history has included examination of graphic textiles such as women’s needlework (Karen Kruger), memorial engravings, weavers and circuit builders (Lisa Nakamura), …
Week 15 April 23, 2020
A Media Archaeology Poetics Kenny Goldsmith unsettles the notion of a single author genius and the enshrined trope of originality. A key forerunner to Goldsmith is Barthes’s essay on authorship Michel Foucault “What is an Author?” Kenneth Goldsmith “Introduction” and chapters “Revenge of the Text,” “Why Appropriation?” “Parsing the New Illegibility,” and “Uncreative Writing in the …
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