1. Welcome to the Course

2. Roll

3. Syllabus

(handout from Bolter [Hugo])

• key points
• implications and consequences

(handout): Timeline of information technologies (30 100-year increments)

Timeline of changing societies: culture, politics, style, art, manners,

Base and Superstructure (relationship of the economic and the cultural)

"literacy" is one of the ways the base influences (determines) the superstructure.

Communications, yes, but also memory, history, ideology (that which goes without saying), politics, psychology, culture....(definition)

Basic and higher literacies: The musician Frank Zappa's definition of rock journalism: "People who can't write, interviewing people who can't think,...for people who can't read."

Obviously, all these people can write, think, and read. But they can't do it on the level that Zappa means and hopes for.

During the 20th C, literacy became a recognized as not just a moral, social good, but as an economic asset. But this is basic, functional literacy. Basic literacy makes the engine of economic and technological progress run smoothly. But higher, critical literacies can produce a degree of critical self consciousness and social awareness that can potentially interfere with economic and technological "instrumentalism." (maximizing efficiency).

Post-literacy: the idea of the "post-literate" society (back to Bolter's concern: not 1482, but 21st century.

1. Roll

2. Questions?

• about the syllabus?
• about the books or materials?
  

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. Download and Print:
Walter Ong readings are now available for downloading and printing from the library: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3. These readings will be discussed beginning in Week 3.

4. Today is Not a Required Class Meeting, But...
Since I previously cancelled this class meeting, you are not required to attend. However, I will be showing the required film during class time. If you do not see the film today at 3:30, you will be responsible for checking the film out from the reserves at the UMD library and watching the VCR tape (using the library's equipment) before our next meeting.

5. For Next Class Meeting:
Write, print, and bring in your Preparation Sheets for our discussion of The Machine That Made Us and Homer: Singer of Tales. Be prepared to read from it and turn it in for credit.

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To:
Write, print, and bring in your Preparation Sheets for our discussion of The Machine That Made Us and Homer: Singer of Tales. Be prepared to read from it and turn it in for credit.

3. For Next Time:
Write, print, and bring in your Preparation Sheets for our discussion of Walter Ong's Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.

If you haven't already download and print Chapter 3.

We will go through the questions one at a time, and hear some of your responses.

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To:
Write, print, and bring in your preparation sheets for our discussion of Walter Ong's Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.

If you haven't already download and print Chapter 3.

3. For Next Time:
Download, print, and read Ong's Chapter 3. Write and print your preparation sheet to read from in class and turn in.

We will go through the questions one at a time, and hear some of your responses.

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To:
Download, print, and read Ong's Chapter 3. Write and print your preparation sheet to read from in class and turn in.

3. For Next Time:
Read Dracula pages 29-122. Write and print your preparation sheet.

We will go through the questions one at a time, and hear some of your responses.

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To:
Read Dracula pages 29-122. Write and print your preparation sheet.

3. For Next Time:
Read Dracula, pages 123-231. There is no preparation sheet for this Thursday. However, do make a list (on paper) of passages and page numbers where the themes we discuss today continue: east vs. west, the past/modernity/decadence, writing and documenting, etc.

1. Nonsense Sentences:
Memorizing the 9 Characteristics

2. Discussion — Dracula 29-122

3. Return of Response Sheets with Response Symbol Key

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To:
Read Dracula, pages 123-231. There is no preparation sheet for this Thursday. However, do make a list (on paper) of passages and page numbers where the themes we discuss today continue: east vs. west, the past/modernity/decadence, writing and documenting, etc.

3. For Next Time:
Read Dracula, pages 231-328. Write and printout a 500-word preparation sheet from the prompt sheet I hand out today.

1. Questions and Comments on Preparation Sheet and the Reponse Key

2. Discussion — Dracula, pages 123-231

3. Return of Response Sheets

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To:
Read Dracula, pages 232-328. Write and printout a 500-word preparation sheet from the Dracula 232-328 prompt.

3. For Next Time:
Read the remainder pf Dracula, pages 329-419. Write and printout a 500-word preparation sheet from the Dracula 329-419 prompt.

1. Discussion — Dracula, pages 232-328
In discussing the theme of writing and knowledge, we will look at the in-class handout "Writing and Knowing: From 1746 to 1997"

From the prompt, we will discuss these two questions:

1. “All History is Contemporary History.” Choose one of these topics, and use several quotations from the novel to explain how Stoker uses different characters and their statements to represent a dialog (a dialogic “working through”) of a contemporary social question.

2. Writing, Reading, and the Production of Knowledge. As we’ve been discussing, we come to know the characters in Dracula through their writing. One of the effects of this narrative device is to foreground the very problems and processes of knowing, and the role of writing and reading in production of knowledge. In a close reading, explicate a passage from the novel to demonstrate what Stoker is saying in Dracula about writing, reading, and the production of knowledge.

2. Preview Dracula 329-419 and Prompt Sheet discussion

Middles and Endings

3. Return of Remaining Response Sheets

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. "Bloofer"?

4. For Today You Were To:
Read the remainder pf Dracula, pages 329-419. Write and printout a 500-word preparation sheet from the Dracula 329-419 prompt.

5. For Next Time:
Download, print, read, and make marginal notes on Hayden White's Introduction to his book Tropics of Discourse.

Write and print out a preparation sheet on this reading. I will hand out a prompt for the White Introduction preparation sheet today.

1. Dracula, pages 329-419 (Imaginary Resoltuions, Real Contradictions)

A. Review of Prompt and handout: Ideology

See the page Synchronic and Diachronic and the handout "Ideology" from the Ideas Site page.

B. Discussion from Prompt

From the prompt, we will discuss this question:

Choose one of the topics below that we’ve been following through the novel. In what ways does Bram Stoker’s resolution of Dracula shut down that contemporary social question or historical problem? Are there ways that he resists settling these real cultural anxieties and political conflicts at the end with conventionally mythic or ideological answers?

Support your answers with specific quotes and close readings of the text.

A. Issues of nationhood and imperialism (blood, land, history): Modern empire in relation to the indigenous cultures of the “developing” world.

B. Questions raised by recent social changes having to do with gender roles and/or sexuality (i.e., women’s roles and rights, the status and nature of manhood, the increasing cultural visibility of homosexuality)

C. Anxieties about the advancement of science and technology: writing, printing, medicine, etc.

D. The modern problems of “knowing” (knowledge, consciousness, identity) which the novel’s “epistolary” format raises.

2. Preview of White's Tropics of Discourse "Introduction"

3. Collect Response Sheets

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To:
Download, print, read, and make marginal notes on Hayden White's Introduction to his book Tropics of Discourse.

Write and print out a preparation sheet on this reading. I will hand out a prompt for the White Introduction preparation sheet today.

4. For Next Time:
Download, print, read, and make notes on Hayden's White's "Intepretation of History" (Chapter 2 of Tropics of Discourse).

Write and print out a preparation sheet responding to the prompt handout for this reading.

5. And Coming Up
I will assign the entirety of Bridget Jones Diary for Tuesday, October 20.

6. Readings from Prep Sheets on Dracula

7. Hayden White's "Introduction" to Tropics of Discourse

8. Prompt Sheet/Preview of White's "Interpretation of History"

9. Collect/Hand Back Response Sheets

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To:
Download, print, read, and make notes on Hayden's White's "Intepretation of History" (Chapter 2 of Tropics of Discourse).

Write and print out a preparation sheet responding to the prompt handout for this reading.

4. For Next Time:
Read the entirety of Bridget Jones Diary for Tuesday, October 20. Write and print out a preparation sheet responding to the prompt handout "Bridget Jones Diary 1."

5. Hayden White's "Interpretation of History" from Tropics of Discourse
Today we'll use the handouts "UFOs in Puritan New England!" and "White's Four Modes of Historical Explanation (70)".

6. Prompt Sheet/Preview of Bridget Jones' Diary

7. Collect/Hand Back Response Sheets

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To:
Read the entirety of Bridget Jones Diary for Tuesday, October 20. Write and print out a preparation sheet responding to the prompt handout "Bridget Jones Diary 1."

4. For Next Time:
Write and printout a preparation sheet responding to the prompt handout "Bridget Jones Diary 2."

5. Complete Group Work on Hayden White's "Interpretation of History"
Today we'll use "White's Four Modes of Historical Explanation (70)".

6. Prompt Sheet/Preview of Bridget Jones' Diary and Postmodernism

7. Collect/Hand Back Response Sheets

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
Write and printout a preparation sheet responding to the prompt handout "Bridget Jones Diary 2."

4. For Next Time
Bring in all books, readings, prep sheets, notes for a Review Session for the Midterm Exam.

5. Midterm Exam Next Thursday
The exam will be held during class time on Thursday, October 29.

6. Bridget Jones' Diary and Postmodernism

7. Collect Prep Sheets

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
Bring in all books, readings, prep sheets, notes for a Review Session for the Midterm Exam."

4. For Next Time
Write and print out the take-home portion of the midterm Exam. Come in ready for the objective portion.

5. Bridget Jones's Diary and Pride and Prejudice
...as examples of postmodern intertextuality.

Midterm Exam Prep

Here are the texts that will be covered on this exam:

• Homer: Singer of Tales (film)
• The Machine that Made Us (film)
• "The Late Age of Print" (Jay David Bolter) (handout)
• "Writing and Knowing From 1746 to 1997" (Samuel Richardson and Pierre Levy) (handout)
• "UFOs in Puritan New England" (passage and quotation from Moses Coit Tyler's History of American Literature) (handout)
• Five Characteristics of Postmodernism (on handout, "Preparation Sheet: Bridget Jones's Diary 2" and your notes from the in-class Powerpoint)
• Orality and Literacy (Walter Ong)
• Tropics of Discourse (Hayden White)
• Bridget Jones's Diary (Helen Fielding)
• Dracula (Bram Stoker)
  
  

The Format
I will give you a copy of the in-class exam format you will see on Thursday.

A Close Reading of the Take-Home Prompt

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
(No assignment)

4. For Next Time
1. From Sven Birkerts' The Gutenberg Elegies, read "Introduction: The Reading Wars" and "Chapter 1: MahVahHugPuh"

2. Preparation Sheet (500 words). Try playing the "believing and doubting game" with Birkerts (see the handout about Peter Elbow’s “Believing and Doubting Games”). Quote and write about two passages from the readings:

1. with a passage that you find yourself ready and willing to believe, try playing the doubting game to “extract” yourself from its “underlying assumptions and conclusions” (Elbow 148) and realize a position or opinion of your own.
2. with another passage that you find yourself resisting or doubting, write to work through your reservations and sincerely "try to have that experience of meaning" (Elbow 165).
   
   

5. Midterm Exams Returned on Thursday

Believing and Doubting
I will give you a hand-out copy of my web page on Peter Elbow's "Believing and Doubting Games"

The Machine is Us/ing Us
We'll watch the video "Web 2.0...The Machine is Us/ing Us" by Michael Wesch.

Wesch uses the example of Wikipedia as a transition to the claim that we will need to rethink

• copyright
• authorship
• identity
• ethics
• aesthetics
• rhetorics
• governance
• privacy
• commerce
• love
• family
• ourselves

Terms

• textuality
• Web 2.0 (Web 3.0)
• millennialism
• XML: content separated from form
• anti-discourse

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
(No assignment)

4. For Next Time
1. From Sven Birkerts' The Gutenberg Elegies, read "Introduction: The Reading Wars" and "Chapter 1: MahVahHugPuh"

2. Preparation Sheet (500 words). Try playing the "believing and doubting game" with Birkerts (see the handout about Peter Elbow’s “Believing and Doubting Games”). Quote and write about two passages from the readings:

1. with a passage that you find yourself ready and willing to believe, try playing the doubting game to “extract” yourself from its “underlying assumptions and conclusions” (Elbow 148) and realize a position or opinion of your own.
2. with another passage that you find yourself resisting or doubting, write to work through your reservations and sincerely "try to have that experience of meaning" (Elbow 165).
   
   

5. Midterm Exams Returned on Thursday

Believing and Doubting
I will give you a hand-out copy of my web page on Peter Elbow's "Believing and Doubting Games"

The Machine is Us/ing Us
We'll watch the video "Web 2.0...The Machine is Us/ing Us" by Michael Wesch.

Wesch uses the example of Wikipedia as a transition to the claim that we will need to rethink

• copyright
• authorship
• identity
• ethics
• aesthetics
• rhetorics
• governance
• privacy
• commerce
• love
• family
• ourselves

Terms

• textuality
• Web 2.0 (Web 3.0)
• millennialism
• XML: content separated from form
• anti-discourse

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
1. From Sven Birkerts' The Gutenberg Elegies, read "Introduction: The Reading Wars" and "Chapter 1: MahVahHugPuh"

2. Preparation Sheet (500 words). Try playing the "believing and doubting game" with Birkerts (see the handout about Peter Elbow’s “Believing and Doubting Games”). Quote and write about two passages from the readings:

1. with a passage that you find yourself ready and willing to believe, try playing the doubting game to “extract” yourself from its “underlying assumptions and conclusions” (Elbow 148) and realize a position or opinion of your own.
2. with another passage that you find yourself resisting or doubting, write to work through your reservations and sincerely "try to have that experience of meaning" (Elbow 165).
   
   

4. For Next Time
Chapters 1 and 2 of Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck.

5. Midterm Exams Returned at the end of class today

The Gutenberg Elegies

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
Chapters 1 and 2 of Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck.

4. For Next Time
Janet Murray Chapter 3 of Hamlet on the Holodeck

Though I am not assignment a written prep sheet, do be prepared mentally to discuss the Murray's four properties of digital environments, and the ways that they might suggest how video games and so on could someday constitute "literature" and the cultural equivalent of the kind of reading that Birkerts defends.

Hamlet on the Holodeck

Key Terms

• holodeck
• alien kiss
• Utopian, dsytopian
• immediacy
• sensation
• multiform story
• harbinger
• literature

Resources

• Star Trek Voyager, Persistence of Vision 1
• Star Trek Voyages, Persistence of Vision 2
• Star Trek Voyages, Persistence of Vision 3
• Calll of Duty Trailer
• Call of Duty (player account)
• Tribute to Myst
• handout: Text of "Tribute to Myst"
• Myst Speed Run

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
Janet Murray Chapter 3 of Hamlet on the Holodeck

Though I am not assignment a written prep sheet, do be prepared mentally to discuss the Murray's four properties of digital environments, and the ways that they might suggest how video games and so on could someday constitute "literature" and the cultural equivalent of the kind of reading that Birkerts defends.

4. For Next Time
Read Murray's Chapter 5, "Agency" and Chapter 10, "Hamlet on the Holodeck?"

Write a prepreation sheet in response to the prompt given out today.

Hamlet on the Holodeck, C3

Key Terms

• additive form
• multiform story
• procedual
• participatory
• spatial
• encyclopedic
• hacking

Resources

• Star Trek Voyager, Persistence of Vision 1
• Star Trek Voyages, Persistence of Vision 2
• Star Trek Voyages, Persistence of Vision 3
• Calll of Duty Trailer
• Call of Duty (player account)
• Tribute to Myst
• handout: Text of "Tribute to Myst"
• Myst Speed Run

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
Read Murray's Chapter 5, "Agency" and Chapter 10, "Hamlet on the Holodeck?"

Write a prepreation sheet in response to the prompt given out today.

4. For Next Time
Download, printout, read, and annotate "Introduction: Preliminary Demarcation of a Type of Bourgeois Public Sphere" from Jurgen Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.

Write a prepreation sheet in response to the prompt given out today.

5. Introductory Remarks on Jurgen Habermas

6. No Class on Tuesday, November 24
This is officially a reading day for getting a start on 1984, though please don't read at the same time you're driving home for Thanksgiving.

Hamlet on the Holodeck:
C5 and Conclusion

Key Terms

• procedual
• participatory
• spatial
• encyclopedic
• hacking
  
  

• agency vs.
• interactivity .vs
• authorship
• stories vs. games
• games as symbolic dramas

Resources

• People of Walmart
• Sorry Everybody
• New York Times review of Hamlet on the Holodeck
• Geoff Ryman's 253
• Rachel Moeller's All in the Family
• Machinima.com (note additive name!) (The Wrong Lot)

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
Download, printout, read, and annotate "Introduction: Preliminary Demarcation of a Type of Bourgeois Public Sphere" from Jurgen Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.

Write a prepreation sheet in response to the prompt given out today.

4. For Next Time
For Tuesday, December 1, read 1984, pages 1-104. Complete a preparation sheet using the prompt given out in class.

5. No Class on Tuesday, November 24
This is officially a reading day for getting a start on 1984, though please don't read at the same time you're driving home for Thanksgiving.

Jurgen Habermas: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Key Terms

• publicity
• representation
• public sphere
• social, society
• structural
• private, personal

Resources

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
For Tuesday, December 1, read 1984, pages 1-104. Complete a preparation sheet using the prompt given out in class.

4. For Next Time
Read 1984, pages 105-224.

George Orwell's 1984

Literary or Discourse Analysis

• "Literary analysis (or 'discourse analysis') is the process of reconstructing a work in the image of one of its possible meanings."
  
  

Remebering Habermas for a moment...
1. "For representation [in the European Middle Ages] pretended to make something invisible visble through the public presence of the lord" (7.5)

2. "Because, on the one hand, the society now confronting the state clearly separated a private domain from public authority, and because, on the other hand, it turned the reproduction of life into something transcending the confines of private domestic authority and becoming a subject of public interest, that zone of continuous adminstrative contact became 'critical' also in the sense that it provoked the critical judgment of a public making use of its reason" (24.7)

Resources

Panopticon (Jeremy Bentham 1791): plan, prison.

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
Read 1984, pages 105-224.

4. For Next Time
Read the remainder of 1984.

George Orwell's 1984, pages 105 - 224

Resources:
nihilism: a philosophy which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.

Film
George Orwell

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
Read the remainder of 1984.

4. For Next Time
1. From Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, read Chapter 4, "Time Frames," and Chapter 6, "Show and Tell"
2. Write a prep sheet in response to the prompt I will give you today.

George Orwell's 1984, pages 105 - 224

Resources:

• nihilism: a philosophy which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.
• ideology
• Patriot Act

Complete Film
George Orwell

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
1. From Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, read Chapter 4, "Time Frames," and Chapter 6, "Show and Tell"
2. Write a prep sheet in response to the prompt I will give you today

4. For Next Time
1. Read the graphic novel Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
2. Write a preparation sheet in response to this prompt (sent by email 12/10):

1. Do a "McCloudian" analysis of a panel (or set of panels) from Persepolis. In other words, write in detail about a panel (or set of panels) that exemplifies some technique or idea from McCloud's Understanding Comics. Be sure to cite page numbers from both Persepolis and Understanding Comics.

2. Write about Satrapi's prevalent use of contrasts of black and white in one of more particular panels. Consider what Satrapi said in an interview:

“Here’s the problem, today, the description of the world is always reduced to yes or no, black or white. Superficial stories. Superhero stories. One side is the good one. The other one is evil. But I’m not a moral lesson giver. It’s not for me to say what is right or wrong. I describe situations as honestly as possible. The way I saw it. That’s why I use my own life as material. I’ve seen these things myself, and now I’m telling it to you. Because the world is not about Batman and Robin fighting the Joker; things are more complicated than that. And nothing is scarier than the people who try to find easy answers to complicated questions.” (2006)

If she doesn't believe in a black-and-white world, why does she represent the world using sharply contrasting black and white tones?

Understanding Comics

Mnemonic Device
WPDAPMI

Remembering Ong on Sight vs. Sound:
Sight isolates, sound incorporates. Whereas sight situates the observer outside what he views, at a distance, sound pours into the hearer. Vision dissects…. Vision comes to a human being from one direction at a time…. When I hear, however, I gather sound simultaneously from every direction; at once: I am at the center of my auditory world, which envelopes me…. [T]he phenomenology of sound enters deeply into human beings’ feel for existence, as processed by the spoken word. For the way in which the word is experienced is always momentous in psychic life. The centering action of sound…affects man’s sense of the cosmos…. Because of its physical constitution as sound, the spoken word proceeds from the human interior and manifests human beings to one another as conscious interiors, as persons, the spoken word forms human beings into close-knit groups. (Ong 71-73)

Resources
Diegesis

1. Roll

2. Questions?

3. For Today You Were To
1. Read the graphic novel Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
2. Write a preparation sheet in response to this prompt (sent by email 12/10):

1. Do a "McCloudian" analysis of a panel (or set of panels) from Persepolis. In other words, write in detail about a panel (or set of panels) that exemplifies some technique or idea from McCloud's Understanding Comics. Be sure to cite page numbers from both Persepolis and Understanding Comics.

2. Write about Satrapi's prevalent use of contrasts of black and white in one of more particular panels. Consider what Satrapi said in an interview:“Here’s the problem, today, the description of the world is always reduced to yes or no, black or white. Superficial stories. Superhero stories. One side is the good one. The other one is evil. But I’m not a moral lesson giver. It’s not for me to say what is right or wrong. I describe situations as honestly as possible. The way I saw it. That’s why I use my own life as material. I’ve seen these things myself, and now I’m telling it to you. Because the world is not about Batman and Robin fighting the Joker; things are more complicated than that. And nothing is scarier than the people who try to find easy answers to complicated questions.” (2006)If she doesn't believe in a black-and-white world, why does she represent the world using sharply contrasting black and white tones?

4. Course Evaluations

5. Final Exam Take-Home Essay
I will give you the prompt today in class. Note that you can use works from either half of the semester in this essay.

7. List of Readings Covered on the In-Class Exam

• Sven Birkerts
• Janet Murray
• "Web 2.0...The Machine is Us/ing Us" by Michael Wesch (YouTube video)
• Jürgen Habermas
• George Orwell
• Scott McCloud
• Marjane Satrapi
• Peter Elbow's "Believing and Doubting Game" (handout/web page)
• Diegesis (online handout)

Persepolis

Why is the comic genre(or graphic novel genre) so often used for memoir (a personal, subjective form of autobiography)?

See, for example, Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale, Allison Gechdel's Fun Home:A Family Tragicomic, Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid in the World, or David Small's Stitches: A Memoir.

O'Gara's Bar, Snelling Ave, St Paul. MN, where a young Charles Schultz drew comics in his bedroom above his father's barber shop.