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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.