Class Schedule
Using this Schedule
Schedule Organization
Our syllabus is divided into thematic books and organized by weekly “chapters,” each of which includes a set of required readings and (typically) a humanities laboratory we will complete together. Readings should be prepared (and the class prep for them committed to your fieldbook) before class on the day of the assignment.
A Key to Alerts
These red alert boxes signal a change of our typical schedule, such as meeting in a location outside the classroom or altered office hours during the week.
These orange alert boxes signal an assignment due date.
These information boxes signal the in-class lab that we will work on together. As the semester progresses I will add links to the lab assignments to these boxes. Your fieldbook reports are due within a week of a given lab session.
Book the First ☛ (re)Mediation
Chapter One: Media Messages
January 9
Introducing the class
January 11
- Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message” (1964)
- Lisa Gitelman, “Introduction: Media as Historical Subjects,” (to the break on page 12) from Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture (MIT Press, 2006)
Chapter Two: Codex
Meet in the Northeastern Archives & Special Collections, 92 Snell Library (in the basement) on January 16
January 16
- Bonnie Mak, “Architectures of the Page” (2011)
January 18
- Amaranth Borsuk, “The Book as Object” from The Book (2018)
Chapter Three: Manuscript
January 23
- James Gleick, The Information, prologue-chapter 2 (pg. 3-50)
- Ted Chiang, “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” (2013)
January 25
- Ælfric, Preface to his translation of Genesis (ca. 990)
- Geoffrey Chaucer, “Chaucer’s Words to His Scrivener” (ca. 1380)
- Excerpts from Johannes Trithemius, In Praise of Scribes (1492)
- (watch) Getty Museum, “Making Manuscripts” (6:19)
- (optional, but new and incredibly cool) A. Radini et al “Medieval women’s early involvement in manuscript production suggested by lapis lazuli identification in dental calculus”
Chapter Four: Literacy
January 30
- Ellen Cushman, “‘We’re Taking the Genius of Sequoyah into This Century’: The Cherokee Syllabary, Peoplehood, and Perseverance” (2011)
- Annette Vee, “Introduction: Computer Programming as Literacy” from Coding Literacy: How Computer Programming is Changing Writing (2018)
February 1
DUE: Dead Media Poster Presentations in class February 1
Book the Second ☛ Impression
Chapter Five: Into the Matrix
February 6
- Amaranth Borsuk, “The Book as Content” from The Book (2018)
- (watch) Stephen Fry, The Machine That Made Us (This video is about 1 hour long; plan accordingly!)
February 8
- James Gleick, The Information (2011), chapter 3 (pg. 51-77)
- Adam J. Hooks, “How to Read Like a Renaissance Reader” (2012)
- (optional, but very useful, watch) “Printing” vocational film (1947) and “Learning to Set Type” vocational film (1940s)
Chapter Six: Print Cultures
Professor Cordell away on February 15 and 20. Virtual class on February 15
February 13
- Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Chapters 2-7 or in this edition without chapters (read from pg. 14 “From a child I was fond of reading” to pg. 53 “I think this was in or about the year 1729.”)
- Lisa Gitelman, “Print Culture (Other Than Codex): Job Printing and Its Importance” from Comparative Textual Media (2013)
February 15
- Sydney J. Shep, “‘Smiley, you’re on candid camera’: Emoticons & Pre-Digital Networks” (2011)
- Chris Gayomali, “How Typeface Influences the Way We Read and Think” (2013)
- Lindsay Lynch, “How I Came to Love the En Space” (2016)
- Choose a font to research from the Font Review Journal, Typographica’s Favorite Typefaces of 2017, or the Kern Your Enthusiasm series. Be ready to discuss it in class.
Chapter Seven: Typecasting
Professor Cordell away on February 15 and 20. No class on February 20
February 22
- Articles about the Victoria Press
- M. M. H., “A Ramble with Mrs. Grundy: A Visit to the Victoria Printing Press,” English Woman’s Journal (1860)
- “The Victoria Press,” Illustrated London News (15 June 1861)
- Emily Faithfull, “Women Compositors,” English Woman’s Journal (1861)
- Sarah Werner, “Finding Women in the Printing Shop” (2014)
Chapter Eight: Circulation
February 27
- 19th-Century Commentaries on Novel Reading:
- “On Novel Reading” (from The Guardian; or Youth’s Religious Instructor, 1820)
- “Devouring Books” (from the American Annals of Education, 1835)
- M.M. Backus, “Novel Writers and Publishers” (from Christian Parlor Magazine, 1844)
- Anna North, “When Novels Were Bad for You” (2014)
- Frank Furedi, “The Media’s First Moral Panic” (2015)
March 1
- James Gleick, The Information (2011), chapters 11 (pg. 310-323)
- Ryan Cordell and Abby Mullen, “‘Fugitive Verses’: The Circulation of Poems in Nineteenth-Century American Newspapers” (2017)
Interlude ☛ Spring Break
March 4-8
Book the Third ☛ Read-Write-Execute
Chapter Nine: Algorithmical
March 13
- James Gleick, The Information (2011), chapters 4-6 (pg. 78-203)
March 15
- Vikram Chandra, “The Beauty of Code” (2014)
- Electronic Literature Collection: Bots
- Scott B. Weingart, “The Route of a Text Message” (2019)
Chapter Ten: Text as Data
March 20
- Sydney Padua, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer (2015), beginning-pg. 90
March 22
- Sydney Padua, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer (2015), pg. 147-257
Chapter Eleven: Obsolescence
March 27
- Octave Uzanne, “The End of Books” (1894)
- (watch) Carl Schlesinger and David Loeb Weiss, “Farewell etaoin shrdlu” (1978)
March 29
- Lauren J. Young, Daniel Peterschmidt, and Cat Frazier, “File Not Found Series” (2017)
+ Craig Mod, “Future Reading” (2015)
Chapter Twelve: Book Futures
April 3
- Lauren J. Young, Daniel Peterschmidt, and Cat Frazier, “File Not Found Series” (2017)
April 5
- Jon Bois, “What Football Will Look Like in the Future” (2017)
- Amaranth Borsuk, “The Book as Idea” and “The Book as Interface” from The Book (2018)
+ James Gleick, The Information (2011), chapters 14, 15, and epilogue
Chapter Thirteen: Memory
Unessay discussion in class April 17
April 10
- Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven, to page 115
April 12
- Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven, to page 228
April 17
- Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven, to end