Social Studies > Journalism > From Print to Digital: Technologies of the Word, 1

From Print to Digital: Technologies of the Word, 1 posted by duggu on 12/12/2007

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Abstract/Syllabus

Courseware/Lectures

Test/Tutorials

Course Highlights

This course features all homework and paper topics in assignments and an extensive list of readings.

Course Description

There has been much discussion in recent years, on this campus and elsewhere, about the death of the book. Digitization and various forms of electronic media, some critics say, are rendering the printed text as obsolete as the writing quill. In this subject, we will examine the claims for and against the demise of the book, but we will also supplement these arguments with an historical perspective they lack: we will examine texts, printing technologies, and reading communities from roughly 1450 to the present. We will begin with the theoretical and historical overviews of Walter Ong and Elizabeth Eisenstein, after which we will study specific cases such as English chapbooks, Inkan knotted and dyed strings, late nineteenth-century recording devices, and newspapers online today. We will also visit a rare book library and make a poster on a hand-set printing press.

Syllabus

Subject Requirements

Active class participation is central to our work together. Attendance is mandatory, and students are expected to arrive in class on time and prepared to discuss common readings. A student who misses two or more class sessions will automatically fail the subject. At the beginning of most class sessions, students will hand in two-page papers that address issues from that week's readings; the questions will be distributed in advance. A ten-page paper will be due in class in Lec #6, and a five page paper due on the last day of classes, five days after Lec #12. I will hand out instructions for these assignments later in the semester. There will be no exams and no final. Each assignment will be weighted as follows in the calculation of the final grade, although these calculations will also take into account improved performance during the course of the semester:

Grading criteria.
ACTIVITIES	VALUES
Class Participation	40 points
Homework (8 Assignments)	40 points (5 points each)
Ten-page Paper	80 points
Five-page Paper	40 points
Total	200 points

Statement on Cheating and Plagiarism

The Web now hosts many sites which offer college-level papers of varying quality on a variety of topics. I am well acquainted with these sites, and with others that offer detection services to professors. Buying a paper and submitting it as your own work is cheating. Copying sections from someone else's print or online work into your own without an acknowledgement is plagiarism. MIT has strict policies against both activities that I will fully enforce. For the appropriate MIT definitions and policies, visit the following Web sites. If you are uncertain about what constitutes cheating or plagiarism, please contact me before submitting the work in question.

MIT Online Writing Communication Center
Avoiding Plagiarism

Calendar

Course calendar.
LEC #	TOPICS	KEY DATES
1	Introduction: The Perpetually Imminent Demise of the Book
2	Theorizing Orality and Literacy	Homework 1 due
3	Was There a "Printing Revolution"?	Homework 2 due
4	English Chapbooks	Homework 3 due
5	A Visit to the Burndy Library	Homework 4 due
6	Critiquing Early Printing Assignments	Ten-page paper due
7	Typesetting
8	An Alternative to the Technologized Word: The Inkan Khipu (Guest: Prof. Gary Urton, Anthropology, Harvard)	Homework 5 due
9	The Technologized Word in the Nineteenth Century	Homework 6 due
10	Consultations with Instructor
11	Reading Communities Today	Homework 7 due
12	Reading Online	Homework 8 due
13	Conclusion	Five-page paper due 5 days after Lec #12

Readings

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: 041671370X.

Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1983. ISBN: 0521258588.

Gitelman, Lisa. Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. ISBN: 0804732701.

Long, Elizabeth. Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2003. ISBN: 0226492613.

Boczkowski, Pablo. Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. ISBN: 0262025590.

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, 2001. ISBN: 0312183704.

Readings by Session

Course readings.
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: 0262631768.
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: 041671370X. Optional McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994, pp. 3-73. ISBN: 0262631598.
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: 0844404101. Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 3-90. ISBN: 0521258588. 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: 0521312183. Thompson, Roger, ed. Samuel Pepys' Penny Merriments. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1977, pp. 102-113 and 247-263. ISBN: 0231042809. 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, 1983, pp. 185-252. ISBN: 0521258588.
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: 0292785399. 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, 1999. ISBN: 0804732701.
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: 0226492613. 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: 0262025590. New York Times Technology Section online The Houston Chronicle "Virtual Voyager." New Jersey Online's Community Connection
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: 0822333791.

Study Materials

This section includes the professor's editing suggestions for paper writing.

Editing Suggestions

The writing process includes rigorous editing practices. Below are some points to keep in mind as you re-read and edit your papers before turning them in. You may also wish to look at the brief guide to writing: Strunk, William Jr., and E. B. White. The Elements of Style. New York, NY: Longman, 2000. ISBN: 020530902X.

Some Rules

Avoid passive constructions. "The chair was seen by me," is not as forceful as "I saw the chair."
Use the past tense when describing historical individuals and events, not the present tense.
Avoid unnecessary words. After you have drafted your essay, set it aside for a day or two. Then reread it, eliminating every word that is redundant or does not add to your meaning. Prime candidates for deletion are adverbs such as "very," "quite," "extremely."
Never use the phrase "I feel that...." This lends a subjective air to your argument that tends to discredit you. Write "I think that...."
Learn how to use the spell-checker on your computer program.

Six Questions to Ask Before Turning in Your Paper

Is the title of my essay informative?
Do I state my thesis point soon enough, perhaps even in the first sentence, and keep it in view throughout the paper? Is the opening paragraph interesting, and by its end, have I focused on the topic?
Is my organization clear? Does each point lead into the next, without irrelevances and without anticlimaxes?
Is each paragraph unified by a topic sentence or topic idea?
Are sentences concise, clear and emphatic? Are needless words and inflated language eliminated?
Is the final paragraph conclusive without being repetitive?