E-mail: ravel@mit.edu

Subject 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 class, 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 the book and printing technology at two earlier moments in the history of the West, the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the revolutionary age at the end of the eighteenth century. After this extended historical detour, we will reexamine the fate of the book at the turn of the millenium.

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. There will also be at least one field trip and two or more speakers. Students will hand in hard copies of two five-page papers, due on 9/28 and 11/2. There will be no midterm or final exam in this course, but there will be a final project which students will present orally in class and complete in an electronic format. I will hand out instructions for these assignments later in the semester. 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:

Class Participation 40 points

Five-Page Papers 40 points each

Oral Presentation 40 points

Final Project 40 points

TOTAL 200 points

Subject ReadingsThe following books are available for purchase at the Coop Bookstore; they should also be on reserve in the Hayden Library, Room 14N-132. Reserve readings, indicated below by an asterisk (*), are also available in 14N-132.

Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word.

Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe.

Lisa Jardine, Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print.

Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller.

Lynn Hunt, et al., The Challenge of the West. (Recommended.)

9/9. Introduction.

9/14. The Book is Dead!

1. *Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, 1-94.
2. *George P. Landow, "Twenty Minutes into the Future, Or How are We Moving Beyond the Book?" in The Future of the Book, ed. Geoffrey Nunberg, 209-37.
3. Book History Timeline

9/16. The Library is Dead!

1. *Geoffrey Nunberg, "The Places of Books in the Age of Electronic Reproduction," Representations 42 (Spring 1993): 13-37.
2. *Patrick Bazin, "Toward Metareading," in The Future of the Book, ed. Geoffrey Nunberg, 153-68.
3. *Jane C. Ginsburg, "Copyright Without Walls?: Speculations on Literary Property in the Library of the Future," Representations 42 (Spring 1993): 53-73.

9/21. Long Live the Book and the Library!

1. *Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies, 11-74, 87-94, 117-33.
2. Online debate between Murray and Birkerts

9/23. A Theoretical Perspective I

1. Ong, 1-77.

9/28. A Theoretical Perspective II

1. Ong, 78-155.

9/30. A Historical Perspective I

1. Eisenstein, 3-106.
2. Hunt, 543-76. (Recommended)

10/5. A Historical Perspective II

1. Eisenstein, 109-184.
2. Hunt, 577-610. (Recommended)

10/7. A Historical Perspective III

1. Eisenstein, 185-276.

10/12. COLUMBUS DAY HOLIDAY (Class meets on 10/13.)

10/13. Erasmus, Man of Letters I

1. Jardine, 3-98.
2. Erasmus Web Site

10/14. Erasmus, Man of Letters II

1. Jardine, 99-189.

10/19. A Visit to the "Printing Matters" Exhibit at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University

1. "Printing Matters: The Materiality of Print in Early Modern Europe"

10/21. Reading Erasmus

1. *The Paraclesis (Introduction to Erasmus' translation of the New Testament.)
2. *Colloquies, ed. and trans. Craig R. Thompson, vii-xxix, 22-37, 130-74. (Introduction, "The Wooer and the Maiden," "The Godly Feast.")

Week Eight

10/26. Menocchio: A Sixteenth-Century Reader I

1. Ginzburg, xiii-xxvi, 1-51.

10/28. Menocchio: A Sixteenth-Century Reader II

1. Ginzburg, 51-128.

11/2. The Eighteenth Century: Changes in Authorship

1. *Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?" in Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies, eds. C. Mukerji and M. Schudson, 446-64.
2. *Carla Hesse, "Enlightenment Epistemology and the Laws of Authorship in Revolutionary France, 1777-1793," Representations 30 (Spring 1990): 109-37.
3. Hunt, 613-44. (Recommended)

11/4. The Eighteenth Century: Changes in Publishing

1. *Jürgen Habermas, "The Public Sphere." in Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies, eds. C. Mukerji and M. Schudson, 398-404.
2. *Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, 20-91.
3. Hunt, 645-77. (Recommended)

Week Ten

11/9. Eighteenth-Century Readers

1. *Robert Darnton, "Readers Respond to Rousseau," in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, 215-56.
2. *John Brewer, "Cultural Consumption in Eighteenth-Century England: The View of the Reader."

11/11. VETERANS DAY -- NO CLASSES

11/16. Print and Revolution

1. *Darnton and Roche, eds. Revolution in Print: The Press in France, 1775-1800, 107-23, 141-76.
2. Hunt, 679-709. (Recommended)

11/18. A Discussion With Ann Wolpert, Director of the MIT Libraries

1. Annual Report of the Director of the MIT Libraries.

Week Twelve

11/23. Some Library Web Pages

1. The British Library.
2. The French National Library (BnF).
3. The United States Library of Congress.

11/25. Review Session

11/30. A Discussion with Frank Urbanowski, Director of the MIT Press

1. The MIT Press Web Site

12/2. Individual Consultations with Instructor

12/7. Oral Reports on Web Projects

12/9. Oral Reports on Web Projects