This section features the assigned readings and required and recommended texts for the course. Readings by session are available below.
Required Texts
Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York, NY: Menthuen, 1982. ISBN: 9780416713701.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780521258586.
Gitelman, Lisa. Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780804732703.
Long, Elizabeth. Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780226492612.
Boczkowski, Pablo. Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780262025591.
Recommended Texts
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 # | Topics | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction: The Perpetually Imminent Demise of the Book |
Murphy, Priscilla Coit. "Books Are Dead, Long Live Books." Cambridge, MA: MIT Communications Forum, 1999. 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. |
| 2 | Theorizing Orality and Literacy | Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York, NY: Menthuen, 1982, pp. 1-138 and 156-179. ISBN: 9780416713701. Optional McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994, pp. 3-73. ISBN: 9780262631594. |
| 3 | Was There a "Printing Revolution"? | 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. 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.) |
| 4 | English Chapbooks | 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. 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) |
| 5 | A Visit to the Burndy Library | Thorndike, 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 Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 185-252. ISBN: 9780521258586. |
| 6 | Critiquing Early Printing Assignments | In-class exercises. Early English Books Online (EEBO) Houghton Library (Harvard) |
| 7 | Typesetting | A 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) |
| 8 | An Alternative to the Technologized Word: The Inkan Khipu (Guest: Prof. Gary Urton, Anthropology, Harvard) | 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 |
| 9 | The Technologized Word in the Nineteenth Century | Gitelman, Lisa. Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780804732703. |
| 10 | Consultations with Instructor | |
| 11 | Reading Communities Today | 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 |
| 12 | Reading Online |
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." |
| 13 | Conclusion | 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. |