Syllabus

Wednesday 1.14

Class

• What's on YouTube? The Machine is Us/ing Us

• Discussion: What's a medium? What is the future of reading?

• Claude Shannon's diagram and its variants (powerpoint available here)

Friday 1.16

• Workshop: Using nfomedia (the class wiki software), write a brief bio of yourself. Include your academic interests.

No class Monday 1.19

Wednesday 1.21

Class

• What's on YouTube? A Brief History of Communication (Commercial) Ali G interviews Noam Chomsky

• Documentary: "Let There Be Words: The Origins of Human Language"

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry: Technology Survey. Course Projects: My Journal

• McQuail, Denis. "Four Models of Communication." McQuail's Mass Communication Theory. pp 68-75. (on Blackboard)

Friday 1.23

• Workshop: Construct a timeline of your personal experience with communications media. What is the first medium you remember using? What media have been added to your experience along the way? And what is the most recent addition? And, finally, which media no longer play any role in your life? There are probably some media that still exist, that you may even still use, but that play a smaller part in your life than they used to. Include those as well.

Monday 1.26

Class

• What's on YouTube? Woody Allen checks in with Marshall McLuhan.

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry: Choose one of the four models of communication from McQuail's Mass Communication Theory or one of the diagrams from the powerpoint presentation. Consider how that model applies to oral culture as described by Ong and McLuhan.

• Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. excerpts on oral culture

• McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. excerpts on oral culture

Wednesday 1.28

Class

• What's on YouTube?

• Problem: Transition from orality to literacy.

• Guest Speaker: Prof. Tom Hahn. from the English Department

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry: The nature and shaping effects of a medium: applying what you learned about communication theory to an interesting case. Take notes on Dalrymple's article. Use what you learned about communication theory from McQuail (Mass Communication Theory) to understand what is going on in the communication situation described and analyzed by Dalrymple. Armed with your notes, diagram the situation(s), applying some of the key concepts explained by McQuail.

• Dalrymple, William. "Homer in India." The New Yorker

• Oral Composition: Milman Parry, Albert Lord, and John Miles Foley

• Wikipedia entry: Oral Tradition

• John Miles Foley's Pathways Project

• Milman Parry Collection Online

Friday 1.30

• Workshop: Timeline tool tutorial with Nora Dimmock. Timeline Project

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry: Text-based Timeline.

Monday 2.2

Class

• What's on YouTube? History of Writing

• Documentary: "Civilization to Colonization: Language Takes Written Form"

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry: Respond to Gaur's "A History of Writing."

• Gaur, Albertine. A History of Writing. 13-47, 149-64.

Wednesday 2.4

Class

• What's on YouTube?

• "Doing Things the Old-Fashioned Way," Weekend Edition: Saturday, NPR 3/26/00

• Five "Problems in Writing" Team Project: Course Projects

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry: Continue working on your interactive timeline.

Friday 2.6

• Workshop: Team projects.

Monday, 2.9

Class

• What's on YouTube? How to Make a Quill Pen

• In-class work on team projects.

Assignments Due Today

• Instead of a journal entry, you'll be working in teams this week!

Wednesday, 2.11

Class

• Team Presentations: Problems in Writing.

Assignments Due Today

• Email Rachel a copy of the powerpoint, or the link to an interactive timeline, so that your projects can become a resource on the class site.

Friday, 2.13

• Workshop: Paleography session with John Chandler. NOTE: We will be meeting in the Robbins Library.

Assignments Due Today

• Blog Post: Post the link to your interactive timeline to the course blog. Comment on at least two other timelines.

Monday, 2.16

Class

• Documentary: The Machine that Made Us

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry: Response to McLuhan.

• McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Excerpts: "A New Translation of Culture"

Wednesday, 2.18

Class

• Session in Rush Rhees Special Collections (with Pablo Alvarez): an array of early printed books.

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry: Response to McLuhan.

• McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Excerpts: "Typography Invades Manuscript Culture."

Friday, 2.20

• Workshop: The Virtual Bookshelf. Each team chooses for further study one of the early books that Pablo Alvarez assembled. Investigate the full history of the book from its origin to its current location by asking such questions as:

1. Who printed it, under what circumstances?
2. How can I recognize the physical object? What are its identifying characteristics? size, paper, font(s), binding, etc. (Examine a bookseller's catalogue for good examples of such bibliographical descriptions.)
3. What does it look like? Reproduce (with digital images) key aspects of the book.
4. Where did it come from? Map the provenance of the book from its place of origin to Rochester.

Monday, 2.23

Class

• Guest:Prof. Jeffrey Glover. Print in early America.

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Eisenstein, Elizabeth. "An Essay on Some Features of Print Culture." The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. 42-64.

Wednesday, 2.25

Class

• Guest: Prof. Katherine Mannheimer

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Eisenstein, Elizabeth. "An Essay on Some Features of Print Culture." The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. 64 - 89.

• Swift, Jonathan. "On Poetry: A Rapsody." (1733) [Note: You will need a UR computer for access to this reading, or log in through Voyager if you are off-campus.]

Friday, 2.27

• Workshop: Timemaps with Nora Dimmock.

Monday, 3.2

Class

• Ray and Charles Eames, A Communications Primer

• Reading by candlelight

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Kernan, Alvin. Printing Technology, Letters, & Samuel Johnson. (1987)
  • Introduction (pp 3-7)
  • Chapter 2: Printing, Bookselling, Readers, and Writers in Eighteenth-Century London (pp 48-70)

• St. Clair, William. The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. (2007)
  • Chapter 1: Reading and Its Consequences (pp 10-18)
  • Chapter 20: "Reading, Reception, and Dissemination." (pp 394-412)

Wednesday, 3.4

Class

• Authorship and Copyright

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Kernan, Alvin. Printing Technology, Letters, & Samuel Johnson. (1987)
  • "Copyright and the Writer's Identity" (pp 97-102)

• St. Clair, William. The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. (2007)
  • Chapter 3: Intellectual Property (pp 43-65)

Friday, 3.6

• Workshop: Timemap Teamwork (with Nora Dimmock)

Spring Break

Monday, 3.16

Class

• Powerpoint available here.

• Imaging in the Age of Print: The Urge to Look

• Visual Satire in the age of Hogarth

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Ivins, William. Prints and Visual Communication. Available here through the UR network.
  • Chapter 1: Introduction
  • Chapter 2: The Road Block Broken

• The History of Visual Communication (See especially sections 5-7)

Wednesday, 3.18

Class

• Powerpoint available here.

• The "exactly repeatable image": Lithography & Photography

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Ivins, William. Prints and Visual Communication. Available here through the UR network.
  • Chapter 4: The Tyranny of the Rule: The 17th and 18th Centuries
  • Chapter 5: The Tyranny Broken: The 19th Century

Friday, 3.20

• Workshop: Timemap Teamwork (with Nora Dimmock)

Monday, 3.23

• Imaging in the Age of Print: William Blake (Powerpoint)

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Viscomi, Joseph. Illuminated Printing The William Blake Archive

Wednesday, 3.25

Class

• Timemap Presentations

Friday, 3.27

• Workshop: The William Blake Archive

• Journal Entry: Use the Image Search Tool in the Blake Archive to explore the images on MHH 15. The Image Search tool attempts to make it possible for you to find any image in Blake's illuminated books, and to find all images related to it. On plate 15 you'll note that there are several interlinear images (little people, squiggles, etc.) in addition to the large primary image at the bottom of the plate. Compare the image searching you did using the Image Search tool in the Blake Archive to the results you get by using another image-searching tool, such as Google Image Search, Flickr, etc. Describe your results.

• Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Monday, 3.30

Class

• Rocketbook

• Kindle Ad

• Jeff Bezos on the Daily Show

• Digital Literacy, Digital Books

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Rosen, Christine. People of the Screen The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society Fall 2008.

• Siracusa, John. The Once and Future E-Book: On Reading in the Digital Age Ars Technica. 1 February 2009.

• Scott, David Meerman. Does a New Literacy Call for a New Book Model? Web Ink Now. 2 February 2009.

Tuesday, 3.31

• Screening of Helvetica
  • Gleason Theater
  • 6pm

Wednesday, 4.1

Class

New Ways of Reading Powerpoint here

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Brown, Mandy. In Defense of Readers A List Apart: For People Who Make Websites. 17 February 2009.

• Visel, Dan. Correspondences if:book: A Project of the Institute for the Future of the Book. 31 January 2009.

• Augenbraum, Harold. Flat Screen Novels Reading Ahead. 9 February 2009.

Friday, 4.3

• Workshop: The Frederick Douglass Project NOTE: We are meeting in the Rare Books Library.

Monday, 4.6

Class

• Internet Before Internet Powerpoint here

• History of the Internet

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Bush, Vannevar. "As We May Think." Atlantic Monthly (July 1945)

• Wright, Alex. "The Web That Time Forgot." International Herald Tribune. 17 June 2008.

Wednesday, 4.8

Class

• "Knowledge, the Internet, and Information Overload." Powerpoint here

• Clay Shirky on "Cognitive Surplus"

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Juskalian, Russ. Interview with Clay Shirky Part I and Part II Columbia Journalism Review. 19 December 2008.

Friday, 4.10

• Workshop: The Frederick Douglass Project

• • Please type your transcription in either Word or notepad and save as a .txt file.

Monday, 4.13

Class

• Death of the Newspaper

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Shirky, Clay. Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable Clay Shirky 13 March 2009.

• Surowiecki, James. "News You Can Lose." The New Yorker. 22 December 2008.

• Owens, Simon. "How Niche Bloggers Fill Gaps Left by Local Newspapers, Alt-Weeklies." MediaShift. 30 January 2009.

Wednesday, 4.15

Class

• Chad Post, Open Letter, and three percent

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Darnton, Robert. Google & the Future of Books The New York Review of Books. 12 February 2009.

• Cohen, Noam. "Some Fear Google?s Power in Digital Books". The New York Times. 1 February 2009. (Response to Darnton)

• Werner, Sarah. Responses to Darnton.
  • navigating the information landscape. 6 February 2009.
  • democratizing early english books 16 February 2009.
  • accessing and looking at books. 2 March 2009.

Friday, 4.17

• Workshop: E-Readers with Susan Gibbons

• Assignments Due Today

• • Journal Entry: Record your experience transcribing a Douglass letter. Reflect on the media and media translations/transformations involved.

Monday, 4.20

Class

• Mind and Machine

• Brain Computer Interface

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Kurzweil, Raymond.
  • Interview on Computerworld. 11 November 2007.
  • Additional comments from Computerworld interview here and here. 13 November 2007.

• Is Technology Rewiring our Brains?" The Independent. 4 December 2008.

• Zimmer, Carl. How Google is Making Us Smarter Discover. 15 January 2009.

Wednesday, 4.22

Class

• The Google Generation in the Classroom

• Howard Rheingold Attention 102

• angry professor

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Bauerlein, Mark.
  • "Online Literacy is a Lesser Kind." The Chronicle of Higher Education. 19 September 2008.
  • Interview. The Minnesota Review. Winter 2005.

• Kirschenbaum, Matthew. "Hello Worlds: Why Humanities Students Should Learn to Program." The Chronicle for Higher Education. 23 January 2009.

Friday, 4.24

• Workshop: The Frederick Douglass Project

• Assignments Due Today

• • Do some light research on your letter(s) so that you can add explanatory notes during the lab session.

Monday, 4.27

Class

• McLuhan & Birkerts

• Recognizing the Pattern in the Laws of Media

Assignments Due Today

• Journal Entry

• Birkerts, Sven. Excerpts from The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. 1994.

• McLuhan, Marshall. The Playboy Interview 1969.

Wednesday, 4.29

Class

• McLuhan & Birkerts

• moms on the net

• TRS 80 from Radio Shack

Assignments Due Today

• Transcriptions (HTML files with annotations)

Friday, May 1

• All work is due, no exceptions.