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CMS.880

From Print to Digital: Technologies of the Word, 1450-Present

Undergraduate · Historical course

Fall 2005

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.

Readings

  • Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word . New York, NY: Menthuen, 1982. ISBN: 9780416713701.
    Required
  • Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780521258586.
    Required
  • Gitelman, Lisa. Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780804732703.
    Required
  • Long, Elizabeth. Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life . Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780226492612.
    Required
  • Buy at MIT Press Boczkowski, Pablo. Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780262025591. ↗
    Required
  • 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.
    Recommended
  • Buy at MIT Press Murphy, Priscilla Coit. “ Books Are Dead, Long Live Books .” Cambridge, MA: MIT Communications Forum, 1999. ↗
    Listed reading
  • 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. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word . New York, NY: Menthuen, 1982, pp. 1-138 and 156-179. ISBN: 9780416713701.
    Listed reading
  • McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994, pp. 3-73. ISBN: 9780262631594. ↗
    Listed reading
  • 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.
    Listed reading
  • Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 3-90. ISBN: 9780521258586.
    Listed reading
  • Grafton, Anthony T. “The Importance of Being Printed.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 11 (Autumn 1980): 265-286.
    Listed reading
  • Tan, Philip. “ Little Leadings .” 1998 (Student cyber-fiction set in a sixteenth-century printshop). ↗
    Listed reading
  • 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.
    Listed reading
  • Thompson, Roger, ed. Samuel Pepys’ Penny Merriments . New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1977, pp. 102-113 and 247-263. ISBN: 9780231042802.
    Listed reading
  • Thorndike, Lynn, ed. The Sphere of Sacrobosco and Its Commentators . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1949, pp. 118-123.
    Listed reading
  • Grafton, Anthony. “Introduction to the AHR Forum: How Revolutionary Was the Print Revolution?” American Historical Review 107 (February 2002): 84-86.
    Listed reading
  • Eisenstein, Elizabeth. “An Unacknowledged Revolution Revisited.” American Historical Review 107 (February 2002): 87-105.
    Listed reading
  • Johns, Adrian. “How to Acknowledge a Revolution.” American Historical Review 107 (February 2002): 106-125.
    Listed reading
  • Eisenstein, Elizabeth. “Reply.” American Historical Review 107 (February 2002): 126-128.
    Listed reading
  • Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 185-252. ISBN: 9780521258586.
    Listed reading
  • Read about the press in The Harvard Gazette (2002) and The Harvard Crimson (2006) ↗
    Listed reading
  • 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.
    Listed reading
  • 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.
    Listed reading
  • LEC #: 9 · Topics: The Technologized Word in the Nineteenth Century · READINGS: Gitelman, Lisa. Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780804732703.
    Reading assignment
  • Long, Elizabeth. Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life . Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780226492612.
    Listed reading
  • Buy at MIT Press Boczkowski, Pablo. Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780262025591. ↗
    Listed reading
  • LEC #: 13 · Topics: Conclusion · READINGS: 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.
    Reading assignment
Sources