Transitions in Media:
Manuscript to Print, 1450; Print to Digital, Today
Syllabus
Before class, you may wish to review Febvre & Martin, The Coming of the Book .
Jan. 19.
Print Culture, c.1450. GENRES: encyclopedia, chronicle.
Read: Farquhar in Hindman, From Pen to Press. Buhler, The Fifteenth Century Book,
the Scribes, the Printers, the Decorators. Wilson, The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle. Background:
Carruthers, A Book of Memory: Memory in Medieval Culture.
Jan. 26.
Literacy, language & marketing. GENRES: Psalter, Book of Hours.
Read: Camille, Mirror in Parchment. Duggan, "The Psalter on the Way to the Reformation."
Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, Chap. 31: "Faith/Hate" 341-61.
Furet, Reading and Writing: Literacy in France. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, England
Feb. 4.
Genres: Herbal, volvelle, anatomy, maps
Discuss in classWalter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy, Chap. 3.
Read: Wilfrid Blount, The Illustrated Herbal. Carmenina Tomassini, The Printing of the Medical Writings of Vesalius
, 1957.
Campbell, The Earliest Printed Maps. (1987). (Lisa Parks; Michael Roberts). See also David Woodward, The History of Cartography (1987-94).
Feb. 11
. Begin Assignment 1: Manuscript to Print.
Choose texts. Discuss Ong, Chapter 3. Continue maps to engraving.
Feb. 19
. Presentations, Assignment 1.
Feb. 25
. Content, reader, literacy.
Read: Albers, Interaction of Color; Tufte, Envisioning Information, Chap. I:
Escaping Flatland; Graff, The Legacies of Literacy (1987), Chap. 4:
"Ends and Beginnings: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Chap. 5: "Print, Protest, and the
People." Also useful are articles on individual countries in Literacy and Social Development
in the West (1981), France, Germany, Sweden, early America.
On Friday, Feb. 26, 3-5, in 202 South Hall, is a presentation
by Jocelyn Bergen on
Octavo Books, a digital publishing firm of CD-ROM facsimiles of important printed books.
This is an interesting example of the attempt to remediate one technology in another.
Does it work? Two of the Octavo CD-ROMs are in the SIMS Computer Lab, 2nd Floor, South
Hall(ask at desk).
Mar. 4.
Uses, cognition, thought
Read: Bolter, Remediation, Chap. I; Part III impact on "self". Carruthers, A Book of
Memory. , esp. visual memory (Chap. 1, Models for memory; Chap. 2, Elementary memory design;
learning the psalms, p. 82).Eisenstein,
Impact of Printing Press., especially Luther and printing (Chap. 4); was there a revolution? [You may also wish to read Carla Hesse's Publishing and
Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1810 (1991), printing and revolution in France.
A. Wexelblatt, "History-based Tools for Navigation." (System
Sciences 1999).
Rocket E-book is available in Computer Lab, South Hall. Try reading a book. Read about the
e-book(s) in a
Feb. 19th article in the NY Times and a more
critical review
of currently available ebooks in Forbes (Feb. 8, 1999) (full text in Melvyl MAGS, search for rocket
ebook).
Mar. 11
. Print to digital. Genre: newspapers.
Read: Pew Research Center Report:
The Internet News Audience Goes Ordinary. Harper, And That's the Way It Will Be (1997)
GRAD
SERVICES.
B. Boguraev, R. Bellamy, C. Kennedy.
"Visual Metaphors for News Story Abstractions." (System Sciences 1999)
Wilson, Spencer, Byrne, Southall. Try using web news through www.cnn.com, www.wsj.com, www.nytimes.com,
www.sfgate.com, sjmercury.com. Enroll on sfgate.com (or another news site) and visit a conference
or discussion group of your choice, taking notes on its value.
Mar. 18
. Digital Publishing. Genre: anatomy on CD-ROM and the web
Read: Gilster, Digital Literacy. Landow, Hypertext. Brand, Media Lab. Bolter, Remediation.
K. Crowston, M. Williams. "The Effects of Linking on Genres of Web Documents." (System
Sciences 1999). Begin Assignment 2: Print to Electronic.
. Visitor: Tom Phelps, CS doctoral student. Presentation on his dissertation
topic, multivalent documents. You may
ftp the report version by Prof. Wilensky and Phelps
or use the printout posted on my bulletin board.
Apr. 22
. Hypermedia, Visual literacy. Readings
Development of student project ideas.
Apr. 29
. Impact of print/digital medium on the university
Corsten, "Universities and Early Printing" in Bibliography and the Study of 15th-century civilization.
The Impact of Electronic Publishing on the Electronic Community (1998). T. Hill. "Collateral
Distance Communication Support of Traditional Classroom Learning." (System Sciences 1999)