Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Revised Ed. London: Verso, 1983 / 2006.
Why a book on Nationalism on a reading list focused primarily on Book History? Why a work that spends most of its time discussing the post-Enlightenment manifestation of the Nation-state when my period-of-focus is early modern? Because, despite most of the received wisdom on this work, Anderson posits a beginning of Nationalism in the early modern period, and places the power behind that beginning in the hands of what he terms "print-capitalism." This is actually an excellent example of a study of the impact of text technologies in a wider-theory context.
Suddenly, this seemingly wacky choice is much more "on topic" for me than it first appeared. My focus, however, does reproduce a phenomenon Anderson decries in his preface, a "Eurocentric provincialism" that ignores his chapter on "Creole Pioneers." This is not, however, because I do not think that the colonized peoples of North and South America (his focus for "creole" cultures) didn't contribute to Nationalism. Rather, the nationalisms I'm interested in are the ones he predicates on his theory of "print-capitalism," and he seems to make a fairly clear distinction, himself, between the European self-definitions he claims are spurred by this phenomenon and the Creole Pioneers whose motivations are distinct and whose growth and actions take place later in his historical narrative.
So since I am reading for the purposes of elucidating the cultural phenomenon of print in a European context, I hope my eurocentric predilections will be excused.
To address the question which brought me to this text, then: Why "print-capitalism," and how does Anderson posit it as a fundamentally influential development vis-a-vis the growth of nationalism in Europe?
Language, both written and oral, features prominently in Anderson's definition-scheme. Accordingly, one of his posited primary cultural roots of 'nation' is the shift away from sacred "truth-languages" (e.g. Latin, Quar'anic Arabic, or Examination Chinese), which are designated as a language which functioned as a "privileged system of re-presentaiton" that is the only way of apprehending "ontological reality" (14-19). Basically, only Latin allows you to talk to God, so Latin is a unifying language for Christendom. Challenged by the new peoples, places, and things discovered in the age of exploration, these languages, which used to bind a large, scattered population into a general idea of a unified faith-system, cease to encompass all of the experiences of its people, leading to a gradual fragmentation, pluralization, and territorializaiton (19). This analysis, particularly the latter part describing its fragmentation, seems to be more focused on the western/ Christian model, and it's unclear if all claims equally apply to the other two sacred-language systems (quar'anic Arabic / Islam, Examination Chinese / Confucianism).
As part of his discussion of the 'upset' of these sacred languages, Anderson relies heavily on figures from Febvre and Martin's Coming of the Book to illustrate the rising power of the vernacular. What this brief sketch of the shift in book-markets (less than a page, and wholly taken from Febvre and Martin) fails to mention, however, is the shifting demographics of the market for printed books as advances in technology and availability of materials brings down prices and makes localized markets more feasible. While it's likely true that 77% of books printed before 1500 were in Latin and that figure quite likely reversed by 1550, the early high percentage of Latin books may have been skewed by the necessities of an inherently constrained market. Only the very wealthiest could buy books, so to take advantage of the greatest number of wealthy people, it made sense to publish in the language the greatest number of highly educated, very wealthy people could read. When the market widened even slightly, it made more sense to publish in local vernaculars. Comparing the market for incunabula to the market for books even 100 years later seems rather problematic.
The second aspect through which Anderson ties language to national consciousness is through the consumption of print materials. Anderson specifically mentions the novel and the newspaper as means of changing the consciousness of groups of people to allow for the concept of imaginary shared communities. Both, he claims, shifted human consciousness from a Messianic time-frame ("a simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous present"), to a clocked, calendrical understanding of time. While 'Novel' and 'Newspaper' both seem a bit late for this, the general gist (readers identify with protagonists in novels and mentally assume their social connections, newspapers are dated and assume a community of concerns) makes sense, if perhaps are also applicable to other genres ("to the Reader" prefaces assume communities of readers long before the novel comes about, news sheets and published letters function essentially the same as the characteristics denoted to newspapers).
The real argument about the nationalizing effect of print, however, comes in chapter 3, when Anderson makes the link between print-as-commodity, with its reproducibility and dissemination-routes, and capitalism. Although he acknowledges that "early printers established branches all over Europe," supported by a quote from Coming of the Book, he then undermines that quote by noting that L'Apparition doesn't contain the words for 'national' and 'international' from the quote, it just mentions "par-dessus les frontières." This translation issue, however, doesn't negate the thrust of the quote, which is that international print-houses *did* work across borders. While I agree that market forces are probably responsible for the rise in vernacular printing (38), this vernacular printing did not respect national borders the way he seems to assume. French books were printed in the Amsterdam, Geneva, and London, all for export to France. While I think vernacular literature did much to define the group consciousness of a given people, it was not necessarily produced by those people, nor was its creation necessarily an act of self-definition. More convincing is his argument that print combined with the Protestant revolution "mobilized [merchants and women] for politico-religious purposes" (40).
Print, he argues, creates a stable realm of communication based on the vernaculars, but with an agreed upon leveling function that unifies dialects (he calls this "print-languages"). While he notes in his footnotes his reliance on Febvre and Martin's more sociological form of print-history, he distinguishes print from print-capitalism as a revolutionary force (contradicting Eisenstein and Steinberg) by noting "although printing was invented first in China, possibly 500 years before its appearance in Europe, it had no major, let alone revolutionary impact -- precisely because of the absence of capitalism there" (n.21, p. 44). The vast differences from the xylographic pages of an ideographic language verses movable type of an alphabetic language may also have impacted this difference, in addition to the differing economic systems.
I feel that while Anderson may be overstating the combined novelty of print and "capitalism" in the late 15th to early 16th centuries, the observations he makes on the sociological impact of printed books seem sound. I'm now conflicted about whether to follow this book with Richard Helgerson's Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England, or D. F. McKenzie's Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. I suppose you'll just have to wait and see...
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Spain: Backgrounds
J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain: 1469-1716. London: Edward Arnold 1963; reprinted London: Penguin, 2002.
Garrett Mattingly, The Armada. Boston: Hughton Mifflin, 1959; reprinted 2005.
So as part of my thesis, I'm looking at the printing environment of propaganda works concerning the brief flash in the Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604) that became known in English speaking accounts as "The Attack of the Spanish Armada." Given that I don't want my retelling to simply reinforce the persistent Two-State account of the event (It was Spain! against England!), but rather to situate the pamphlets I'm looking at in the larger context of international relations in the period, it seemed like a good idea to bone up on A. Spanish history from a Spain-focused point of view, and B. The "best" available account of the attack itself. Hence these two Oldie-but-goodie history books make my list.
J. H. Elliott barely mentions the Armada at all. Beginning with the unification of Castile and Aragon, he traces a complex history of Spain that emphasizes its Italian, Netherlands, and American possessions as integral parts of Spanish identity. The Anglo-Spanish War, which loomed so huge in English imagination, doesn't evoke the same emotional resonance in this Spanish focused account. Instead, far more space is given to the economic factors that shaped Spain's destiny, and the religious and political struggles that shaped its foreign policy. The Netherlands, a possession of Philip II by virtue of his lineage from his father, Charles V's maternal grandmother, Mary of Burgundy.
This work is true Great Man History; it focuses on the interior court struggles, the basic economics, and the personal philosophies which affected the decision making of Ferdinand and Isabella, Philip the Fair (married to Juana the Mad), their son Charles V, and his grandson Philip II. It's worth reading just for the chart of the Spanish Hapsburg lineage, which makes you realize both A: how close the English royal family and the Hapsburgs were, and B: That family tree has loops in it. Suddenly it's easy to understand why Charles II, Philip II's great grandson, looks positively *ill* in every portrait.
While lacking in the pieces of everyday life that social historians today find so appealing (woman? there were women in Spain?) Elliott gives a compelling glimpse into the economic forces which tied Spain to the rest of Europe, and the social forces which errected a thick barrier between its society and the possible intrusions of unorthodox outsiders.
Garrett Mattingly's work is a different beast all together. Focusing on the events leading up to the event itself, as well as a blow-by-blow telling of events, it's aimed at a general history readership. Which means, infuriatingly enough, there are no footnotes. Even so, it's one of the most reputable academic works on the event out there, even though it's a good 51 years old at this point. There are very abbreviated endnotes, however, with brief source descriptions amounting to perhaps one line about every three sources. The notes to chapter 30, "Drake is Captured!", which dealt with some of the print reaction, will be particularly useful to me. It has an intriguing note which describes the pamphlet Discours veritable de ce qui s'est passé entre les deux armées... which claims to have been published in Paris, as "Obviously from the same press" as La copie d'une lettre ... à Don Bernardin de Mendoza, which is one of my main focus texts. Mattingly identified the Italian and Dutch translations of Copie of a Letter, but seems to have missed the second French translation and the German. This chapter does a good job of sketching some of the print reaction. Mattingly credits Medoza with much of the force of the propaganda reaching Spain, but perhaps neglects the impact of English efforts in French and other continental languages. Like most accounts which focus on English Vs. Spanish viewpoints, he also manages to sideline and discount the import or reason for the Dutch and German publications. I just hope I can do them justice without necessarily going out and learning sixteenth century High German right now. I just don't have time, yo.
Garrett Mattingly, The Armada. Boston: Hughton Mifflin, 1959; reprinted 2005.
So as part of my thesis, I'm looking at the printing environment of propaganda works concerning the brief flash in the Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604) that became known in English speaking accounts as "The Attack of the Spanish Armada." Given that I don't want my retelling to simply reinforce the persistent Two-State account of the event (It was Spain! against England!), but rather to situate the pamphlets I'm looking at in the larger context of international relations in the period, it seemed like a good idea to bone up on A. Spanish history from a Spain-focused point of view, and B. The "best" available account of the attack itself. Hence these two Oldie-but-goodie history books make my list.
J. H. Elliott barely mentions the Armada at all. Beginning with the unification of Castile and Aragon, he traces a complex history of Spain that emphasizes its Italian, Netherlands, and American possessions as integral parts of Spanish identity. The Anglo-Spanish War, which loomed so huge in English imagination, doesn't evoke the same emotional resonance in this Spanish focused account. Instead, far more space is given to the economic factors that shaped Spain's destiny, and the religious and political struggles that shaped its foreign policy. The Netherlands, a possession of Philip II by virtue of his lineage from his father, Charles V's maternal grandmother, Mary of Burgundy.
This work is true Great Man History; it focuses on the interior court struggles, the basic economics, and the personal philosophies which affected the decision making of Ferdinand and Isabella, Philip the Fair (married to Juana the Mad), their son Charles V, and his grandson Philip II. It's worth reading just for the chart of the Spanish Hapsburg lineage, which makes you realize both A: how close the English royal family and the Hapsburgs were, and B: That family tree has loops in it. Suddenly it's easy to understand why Charles II, Philip II's great grandson, looks positively *ill* in every portrait.
While lacking in the pieces of everyday life that social historians today find so appealing (woman? there were women in Spain?) Elliott gives a compelling glimpse into the economic forces which tied Spain to the rest of Europe, and the social forces which errected a thick barrier between its society and the possible intrusions of unorthodox outsiders.
Garrett Mattingly's work is a different beast all together. Focusing on the events leading up to the event itself, as well as a blow-by-blow telling of events, it's aimed at a general history readership. Which means, infuriatingly enough, there are no footnotes. Even so, it's one of the most reputable academic works on the event out there, even though it's a good 51 years old at this point. There are very abbreviated endnotes, however, with brief source descriptions amounting to perhaps one line about every three sources. The notes to chapter 30, "Drake is Captured!", which dealt with some of the print reaction, will be particularly useful to me. It has an intriguing note which describes the pamphlet Discours veritable de ce qui s'est passé entre les deux armées... which claims to have been published in Paris, as "Obviously from the same press" as La copie d'une lettre ... à Don Bernardin de Mendoza, which is one of my main focus texts. Mattingly identified the Italian and Dutch translations of Copie of a Letter, but seems to have missed the second French translation and the German. This chapter does a good job of sketching some of the print reaction. Mattingly credits Medoza with much of the force of the propaganda reaching Spain, but perhaps neglects the impact of English efforts in French and other continental languages. Like most accounts which focus on English Vs. Spanish viewpoints, he also manages to sideline and discount the import or reason for the Dutch and German publications. I just hope I can do them justice without necessarily going out and learning sixteenth century High German right now. I just don't have time, yo.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Women Beware Women
While my Major Field is History of Text Technologies, my minor day will focus on the literature and culture of "Renaissance" England. It still bothers me slightly to use the term "Renaissance" after so many years of "Early Modern," but hey, that's what was on the little drop-down menu for selecting minors, and it sounded nifty. That, and since my interests focus mainly in the sixteenth and *very early* seventeenth centuries, for publishing, it made sense.
As such, they expect me to have actually well, *read* some of this literature. I'm solving parts of this problem by teaching a number of texts in my Women in Literature course this summer, but you can only make undergrads read so much of your list. More's the pity.
I may find a way to work Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women into a syllabus at some point. I saw this tragedy performed at the National Theatre when I was in London. The production was spectacular, and I think it distinctly colors my later rereading of the play.
Synopsis:
The critical character in the play is Livia, a twice-widowed noblewoman. Her scheming and manipulation fuels much of the plot, as she arranges relationships around her as though manipulating chess pieces on a board. The chess metaphor is blatant at the end of the second act, and productions tend to play it up to varying degrees. The production I saw did it subtly, with a conquered floor in the part of the set used for Livia's house, which also functioned as much of the main playing space.
Besides Livia, there is her niece Isabella, and Isabella's uncle / Livia's brother Hippolito. The audience quickly learns that Hippolito is in love with his niece, an anguishing experience for this otherwise upstanding man. When he confesses this to Isabella, she rejects him in horror. Meanwhile, Isabella is also dealing with her betrothal to an absolute idiot, called the Ward. Isabella is given some rather choice lines on the horribleness of arranged marriages, "Men buy their slaves, but women buuy their masters" being one of the best (1.2.178). The Ward is a rich fool, and the match is arranged between her father and the Ward's guardian ... Guardiano. Middleton gets around the utter inanity of that name by having no one speak it, except maybe the Ward (and he mangles it to "Guardianer").
Guardiano is evil. At the National he was played by Andrew Woodall with an avuncular malevolence which sneaks up on you, to devastating effect. You want to like him in his first few scenes, as he arranges his Idiot's wedding, but it becomes clear that he has utterly failed the Ward in raising him. And it becomes increasingly clear that he serves his Duke in other ways, most closely as a procurer. The Duke is known for his wicked ways, which apparently involve much wenching (and worrying on the part of his Cardinal brother).
There's a final important pair, a young married couple named Bianca and Leantio. Leantio has just stolen the noble Bianca from her rich parents, secretly married her, and the play opens with her introduction to his Mother. Leantio's terrified that someone will steal his new bride away, and attempts to keep her locked in the family home. Given that set up, of course the Duke sees her during a procession in the first Act.
Whew. Ok -- so how does Livia work her "magic"? She convinces Isabella that her mother slept with a famous Spaniard, thus Isabella's uncle isn't really her uncle. Isabella agrees to marry Adam Sandler's ancestor to facilitate her proposed adultery with her beloved-"not"-Uncle.
Guardiano has Livia invite Leantio's mother over for a game of chess; while they play, Guardiano proposes to show Bianca Livia's art. She finds some rather "lively" art indeed -- the Duke is waiting in an upper gallery, where he proceeds to rape the young bride. Leanto's Mother loses the game. Coming back down stairs, Bianca comes to terms with her new state as a fallen woman. Her reasoning is a bit baffling without some background in EM ideas of purity, but she decides to become the Duke's mistress -- not many other options are left to her.
In the third act, the Duke throws a banquet, and invites Bianca. This is when Leantio discovers she's no longer his sweet young bride. The Banquet is ostensibly so that the Ward may "meet" Isabella (although she's seen him already). She is put through her paces (singing, dancing -- with her Uncle), and then the Ward has a dance with her. At the National, this was pure comic slapstic -- her dance with her uncle was beautiful, and the Ward's utterly painful to watch. Meanwhile, the banquet has thrown a kink in Livia's plans. She's fallen in love. At the ripe "old" age of 39, she falls for Leantio. She provides him an "out" from the Duke's galling offer; he'll avoid the job offered by his cuckold and take the "job" of house-boy for this rich widow. The production I saw had him outfitted in a pewter silk suit for the second half of the show. It was ostentatious.
What could go wrong, you say? Everyone's paired up you say? Well, Leantio can't leave Bianca alone. At the beginning of the fourth act, he comes by to "gloat" - in a really sad way - about his new position as kept-boy. Unfortunately, the Duke sees him, and it occurs to the Duke that if he can kill off Hubby, he can legally marry his mistress, which would conveniently get his sermonizing brother the Cardinal off his back. So he arranges a hit on Leantio, by telling Hippolito that his sister is doing the pool boy, so to speak.
Killing Leantio unravels everything. Livia, broken hearted, informs Isabella (and her enfianced) that she's been sleeping with her Uncle. After this outburst and it's fall-out, it comes to light that the Duke used Hippolito when his hasty marriage becomes known. The family "makes up" and plot to hurt the Duke by throwing a masked Ball in "honor" of his nuptuals. Isabella and Hippolito don't realize how very hurt Livia is, however. She fully intends to kill *everybody*.
At the wedding of Bianca and the Duke, the Cardinal attempts to interrupt things. He thinks Bianca is unfit for lawful marriage, having been a mistress. Bianca and the Cardinal banter about religion, the Duke marries her anyways.
The rest of the play consists of an elaborate masque, which as the National Theatre presented it was a whirling mass of death. I haven't seen a better orchestrated fight sequence (on a revolving stage!) since the Kill Bill movies. Bianca prepares a poisoned cup for the Cardinal, but the Duke ends up drinking it. According to the stage directions, Isabella dies from "flaming fold" thrown in her lap -- the production simplified this into strangling. Guardiano falls through a trap door, as if to hell. In the production, Livia was killed twice: the first time, one of her servants dressed as her is accidentally killed in her place. It seems the stage directions only require once, though. Hippolito is shot (but fights on for a number of lines). Bianca finally kills herself, drinking from the same poisoned cup that kills the Duke.
The Cardinal is left Last Man Standing, and is able to deliver a moralizing bit on Sin. It's only four lines long though, so it doesn't impede too heavily on the bloodbath you've just witnessed.
I don't know exactly how I'd teach this yet. I think pairing it with R&J would be fantastic, actually, given the number of star-crossed lovers and how delightfully raunchy it is. It has some really good points about the things women do *to women* which can be a nice balance for a Women In Literature course, which has the unfortunate tendency to veer towards victimology as students overly simplify complex historical situations. And it's just a fun play, with more bufooning than one expects in a bloody revenge tragedy, mixed with some actual sweet emotions from characters like Livia, who in a simpler play would be purely evil.
As such, they expect me to have actually well, *read* some of this literature. I'm solving parts of this problem by teaching a number of texts in my Women in Literature course this summer, but you can only make undergrads read so much of your list. More's the pity.
I may find a way to work Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women into a syllabus at some point. I saw this tragedy performed at the National Theatre when I was in London. The production was spectacular, and I think it distinctly colors my later rereading of the play.
Synopsis:
The critical character in the play is Livia, a twice-widowed noblewoman. Her scheming and manipulation fuels much of the plot, as she arranges relationships around her as though manipulating chess pieces on a board. The chess metaphor is blatant at the end of the second act, and productions tend to play it up to varying degrees. The production I saw did it subtly, with a conquered floor in the part of the set used for Livia's house, which also functioned as much of the main playing space.
Besides Livia, there is her niece Isabella, and Isabella's uncle / Livia's brother Hippolito. The audience quickly learns that Hippolito is in love with his niece, an anguishing experience for this otherwise upstanding man. When he confesses this to Isabella, she rejects him in horror. Meanwhile, Isabella is also dealing with her betrothal to an absolute idiot, called the Ward. Isabella is given some rather choice lines on the horribleness of arranged marriages, "Men buy their slaves, but women buuy their masters" being one of the best (1.2.178). The Ward is a rich fool, and the match is arranged between her father and the Ward's guardian ... Guardiano. Middleton gets around the utter inanity of that name by having no one speak it, except maybe the Ward (and he mangles it to "Guardianer").
Guardiano is evil. At the National he was played by Andrew Woodall with an avuncular malevolence which sneaks up on you, to devastating effect. You want to like him in his first few scenes, as he arranges his Idiot's wedding, but it becomes clear that he has utterly failed the Ward in raising him. And it becomes increasingly clear that he serves his Duke in other ways, most closely as a procurer. The Duke is known for his wicked ways, which apparently involve much wenching (and worrying on the part of his Cardinal brother).
There's a final important pair, a young married couple named Bianca and Leantio. Leantio has just stolen the noble Bianca from her rich parents, secretly married her, and the play opens with her introduction to his Mother. Leantio's terrified that someone will steal his new bride away, and attempts to keep her locked in the family home. Given that set up, of course the Duke sees her during a procession in the first Act.
Whew. Ok -- so how does Livia work her "magic"? She convinces Isabella that her mother slept with a famous Spaniard, thus Isabella's uncle isn't really her uncle. Isabella agrees to marry Adam Sandler's ancestor to facilitate her proposed adultery with her beloved-"not"-Uncle.
Guardiano has Livia invite Leantio's mother over for a game of chess; while they play, Guardiano proposes to show Bianca Livia's art. She finds some rather "lively" art indeed -- the Duke is waiting in an upper gallery, where he proceeds to rape the young bride. Leanto's Mother loses the game. Coming back down stairs, Bianca comes to terms with her new state as a fallen woman. Her reasoning is a bit baffling without some background in EM ideas of purity, but she decides to become the Duke's mistress -- not many other options are left to her.
In the third act, the Duke throws a banquet, and invites Bianca. This is when Leantio discovers she's no longer his sweet young bride. The Banquet is ostensibly so that the Ward may "meet" Isabella (although she's seen him already). She is put through her paces (singing, dancing -- with her Uncle), and then the Ward has a dance with her. At the National, this was pure comic slapstic -- her dance with her uncle was beautiful, and the Ward's utterly painful to watch. Meanwhile, the banquet has thrown a kink in Livia's plans. She's fallen in love. At the ripe "old" age of 39, she falls for Leantio. She provides him an "out" from the Duke's galling offer; he'll avoid the job offered by his cuckold and take the "job" of house-boy for this rich widow. The production I saw had him outfitted in a pewter silk suit for the second half of the show. It was ostentatious.
What could go wrong, you say? Everyone's paired up you say? Well, Leantio can't leave Bianca alone. At the beginning of the fourth act, he comes by to "gloat" - in a really sad way - about his new position as kept-boy. Unfortunately, the Duke sees him, and it occurs to the Duke that if he can kill off Hubby, he can legally marry his mistress, which would conveniently get his sermonizing brother the Cardinal off his back. So he arranges a hit on Leantio, by telling Hippolito that his sister is doing the pool boy, so to speak.
Killing Leantio unravels everything. Livia, broken hearted, informs Isabella (and her enfianced) that she's been sleeping with her Uncle. After this outburst and it's fall-out, it comes to light that the Duke used Hippolito when his hasty marriage becomes known. The family "makes up" and plot to hurt the Duke by throwing a masked Ball in "honor" of his nuptuals. Isabella and Hippolito don't realize how very hurt Livia is, however. She fully intends to kill *everybody*.
At the wedding of Bianca and the Duke, the Cardinal attempts to interrupt things. He thinks Bianca is unfit for lawful marriage, having been a mistress. Bianca and the Cardinal banter about religion, the Duke marries her anyways.
The rest of the play consists of an elaborate masque, which as the National Theatre presented it was a whirling mass of death. I haven't seen a better orchestrated fight sequence (on a revolving stage!) since the Kill Bill movies. Bianca prepares a poisoned cup for the Cardinal, but the Duke ends up drinking it. According to the stage directions, Isabella dies from "flaming fold" thrown in her lap -- the production simplified this into strangling. Guardiano falls through a trap door, as if to hell. In the production, Livia was killed twice: the first time, one of her servants dressed as her is accidentally killed in her place. It seems the stage directions only require once, though. Hippolito is shot (but fights on for a number of lines). Bianca finally kills herself, drinking from the same poisoned cup that kills the Duke.
The Cardinal is left Last Man Standing, and is able to deliver a moralizing bit on Sin. It's only four lines long though, so it doesn't impede too heavily on the bloodbath you've just witnessed.
I don't know exactly how I'd teach this yet. I think pairing it with R&J would be fantastic, actually, given the number of star-crossed lovers and how delightfully raunchy it is. It has some really good points about the things women do *to women* which can be a nice balance for a Women In Literature course, which has the unfortunate tendency to veer towards victimology as students overly simplify complex historical situations. And it's just a fun play, with more bufooning than one expects in a bloody revenge tragedy, mixed with some actual sweet emotions from characters like Livia, who in a simpler play would be purely evil.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Interdisciplinarity isn't just a word that Word can't recognize: sometimes departments can't either...
Howsam, Leslie. Old Books and New Histories: An Orientation to Studies in Book and Print Culture. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2006. [Relevance: a place to start]
It is somewhat comforting to note that Leslie Howsam begins her first chapter by pointing out that “This vast scope and these blurred boundaries mean that no one can ever be an expert on all its [book history’s] aspects” (3). The committee can’t expect me to know it all – Howsam says so! With the scope and disunity of the “field” – from printed books to electronic texts, medieval manuscripts, modern notebooks; studies of reading, printing, publishing; Ancient Rome to last year in New York – of course no one agrees on the most basic terminology. Howsam identifies three major disciplines in dialogue: history, bibliography, and literature, and then proceeds to triangulate from these more formalized fields the fuzzy interdisciplinary areas between them.
The interdisciplinarities Howsam maps in chapter 2 have been both my joy and my frustration since my undergraduate honors thesis. The region between History and Literature is the provenance of cultural history, literary history, print culture studies, and cultural studies; between history and bibliography the realm of the studies of print houses. Having been “raised” a historian, I find that I still identify with the axes which pivot on that point of Howsam’s triangle, even if I have jumped the departmental fence, as it were. The real value of these first two chapters is in the way Howsam fleshes out this amorphous region between disciplines: by giving examples of studies she feels are material to shaping the field, the second chapter can function as something of a control for my larger project. If the purpose of preliminary examinations in the field of History of Text Technologies is to prove that I have a sense of the field in which I hope to contribute, this snap shot of the field as of 2006 provides a number of nice starting places, and I will likely return to it at the end of this project to see what articles may fill in perceived gaps.
More directly valuable is the concise comparison of “Models of the Book’s Place in History,” in chapter 3, which compares a number of visual and rhetorical models for conceptualizing the function of books (defined loosely in some, and more stringently in others, but primarily physical objects) in human society at more or less specific points of location and time. Beginning with Robert Darnton’s “Communication Circuit Model” from 1982 and it’s critique by Thomas Tanselle, followed by Thomas Adams and Nicolas Barker’s 1993 “Book-Centered Model,” which emphasizes the material object’s influence on humans at various stages, rather than the human influence on the material object. This chapter reflects the three-fold nature of the previous two, in which Darnton’s (historical) model is contrasted by Adams and Barker’s (bibliographical) model and finally rounded out by Peter McDonald’s “Critique from Literary Studies” (1997). While I tend to favor the tangible nature of Adams and Barker’s argument, Howsam notes McDonald’s nod towards Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural theory, and while I wouldn’t attempt to distill it at this fourth level of critique, I find what she presents compelling and will seek out his theory directly in future reading. Ok, so this third chapter has a fourth model, and doesn’t fit completely neatly into the trifold formula of the others. James Secord’s “The Histories of the Book and of Science” (2000) connects the conceptualizations of scientific experiment and the event(s) that constitute authorship, print, and reading. This model, rather than being purely a model of the place of the book in society, is a conceptualization of the idea of the book as a methodology, or, as Howsam phrases it, “using the book as an intellectual approach and a way to open up interpretive possibilities” (45).
While these and the final two chapters in Howsam’s book are a review of the literature, they provide a cogent synopsis of the state of the field, up to fairly recently. She’s a bit more optimistic than I currently am about the problems inherent in “matters of communication” between disciplines -- a lack of shared vocabulary (indeed, the use of the same word to mean fundamentally, if fractionally, different things) is a fairly large stumbling block to easy interdisciplinarity. In the fifth chapter, she gives a nod towards resistance to interdisciplinary techniques in the three fields, particularly history, which challenges book history to justify a place for itself in the academic landscape where territory is well defended.
It is somewhat comforting to note that Leslie Howsam begins her first chapter by pointing out that “This vast scope and these blurred boundaries mean that no one can ever be an expert on all its [book history’s] aspects” (3). The committee can’t expect me to know it all – Howsam says so! With the scope and disunity of the “field” – from printed books to electronic texts, medieval manuscripts, modern notebooks; studies of reading, printing, publishing; Ancient Rome to last year in New York – of course no one agrees on the most basic terminology. Howsam identifies three major disciplines in dialogue: history, bibliography, and literature, and then proceeds to triangulate from these more formalized fields the fuzzy interdisciplinary areas between them.
The interdisciplinarities Howsam maps in chapter 2 have been both my joy and my frustration since my undergraduate honors thesis. The region between History and Literature is the provenance of cultural history, literary history, print culture studies, and cultural studies; between history and bibliography the realm of the studies of print houses. Having been “raised” a historian, I find that I still identify with the axes which pivot on that point of Howsam’s triangle, even if I have jumped the departmental fence, as it were. The real value of these first two chapters is in the way Howsam fleshes out this amorphous region between disciplines: by giving examples of studies she feels are material to shaping the field, the second chapter can function as something of a control for my larger project. If the purpose of preliminary examinations in the field of History of Text Technologies is to prove that I have a sense of the field in which I hope to contribute, this snap shot of the field as of 2006 provides a number of nice starting places, and I will likely return to it at the end of this project to see what articles may fill in perceived gaps.
More directly valuable is the concise comparison of “Models of the Book’s Place in History,” in chapter 3, which compares a number of visual and rhetorical models for conceptualizing the function of books (defined loosely in some, and more stringently in others, but primarily physical objects) in human society at more or less specific points of location and time. Beginning with Robert Darnton’s “Communication Circuit Model” from 1982 and it’s critique by Thomas Tanselle, followed by Thomas Adams and Nicolas Barker’s 1993 “Book-Centered Model,” which emphasizes the material object’s influence on humans at various stages, rather than the human influence on the material object. This chapter reflects the three-fold nature of the previous two, in which Darnton’s (historical) model is contrasted by Adams and Barker’s (bibliographical) model and finally rounded out by Peter McDonald’s “Critique from Literary Studies” (1997). While I tend to favor the tangible nature of Adams and Barker’s argument, Howsam notes McDonald’s nod towards Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural theory, and while I wouldn’t attempt to distill it at this fourth level of critique, I find what she presents compelling and will seek out his theory directly in future reading. Ok, so this third chapter has a fourth model, and doesn’t fit completely neatly into the trifold formula of the others. James Secord’s “The Histories of the Book and of Science” (2000) connects the conceptualizations of scientific experiment and the event(s) that constitute authorship, print, and reading. This model, rather than being purely a model of the place of the book in society, is a conceptualization of the idea of the book as a methodology, or, as Howsam phrases it, “using the book as an intellectual approach and a way to open up interpretive possibilities” (45).
While these and the final two chapters in Howsam’s book are a review of the literature, they provide a cogent synopsis of the state of the field, up to fairly recently. She’s a bit more optimistic than I currently am about the problems inherent in “matters of communication” between disciplines -- a lack of shared vocabulary (indeed, the use of the same word to mean fundamentally, if fractionally, different things) is a fairly large stumbling block to easy interdisciplinarity. In the fifth chapter, she gives a nod towards resistance to interdisciplinary techniques in the three fields, particularly history, which challenges book history to justify a place for itself in the academic landscape where territory is well defended.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
A place to start
Lerer, Seth. “Epilogue: Falling Asleep over the History of the Book.” PMLA 121.1 (Jan 2006): 229–234.
I expected this to be a polemic against the New Boredom, but I was drastically mistaken. It’s a love-song to the printed book, placing the reader in a position of power “over” the physical object, rather than “in front of” a screen, discussing the impossibility of curling up with a computer or electronic reader. The only part of that disparity in inclination that Lerer does not discuss is the likelihood of damaging something by falling asleep on one’s electronic device (yourself or the device); instead he focuses on the aesthetic detractions of such a past time. For much of this article, he treats the importance of studies of the physical object itself lightly, instead focusing heavily on the importance of post-production human interaction with texts (readers, anthologizers, teachers), spending the largest percentage of the article on the makers and consumers of anthologies. While I realize the space of this epilogue is limited, and given its scope it is perforce breezy and not able to treat any specific element in depth, I wish he’d pushed a little harder on the question of why there is so close a connection between Book History studies and canonicity.
In contrast John Guillory’s argument that canons are not composed of individual works, but of assembled value sets that form a literary system, Lerer argues that the history of the book “itself may qualify the claim. Much speculation on the idea of the canon, and in fact much of literary history as a whole, still goes on as if literary works were somehow unbound to the physical objects that house them. Books are objects, though, and canonization is as much a process of se¬lecting space as of selecting value” (231-232). Setting aside the problem of prioritizing space as an issue and then, at the end of the article, dismissing electronic formats on purely aesthetic grounds, I’m not entirely sure that I fully buy the argument that canon-status follows purely from space issues. This seems most applicable to the study of anthologies from a specific period, say early to mid nineteenth century to the late twentieth.
Are questions of the study of Canonization and the study of Book History a chicken and an egg problem? Do scholars examine canonical works because we’re inherently interested in the material history of canonicity (and as a byproduct, reifying the canon), as Lerer explains the study of Anthologies (using, for his example, the 1950 Oxford Book of American Verse), or does the canon itself blind us to other positibilities? Does this focus on Canonical works amount to a teleological view of the history of the book? What about the Also Rans? What about failures? Are they too numerous to be interesting? Can a story be defined by the negative space around it – ie, a piece of canonical literature by its companions on the shelves, the medical books, the trashy ballads, the pious stories that no one reads anymore?
Or is it just that we focus on the current canon, or currently accepted deviations from it (non-canonical works by women, or subject peoples, or children, etc -- and those only at risk of being pidgeonholed), because that is what the Academy currently demands, and we would all like jobs at some point?
I expected this to be a polemic against the New Boredom, but I was drastically mistaken. It’s a love-song to the printed book, placing the reader in a position of power “over” the physical object, rather than “in front of” a screen, discussing the impossibility of curling up with a computer or electronic reader. The only part of that disparity in inclination that Lerer does not discuss is the likelihood of damaging something by falling asleep on one’s electronic device (yourself or the device); instead he focuses on the aesthetic detractions of such a past time. For much of this article, he treats the importance of studies of the physical object itself lightly, instead focusing heavily on the importance of post-production human interaction with texts (readers, anthologizers, teachers), spending the largest percentage of the article on the makers and consumers of anthologies. While I realize the space of this epilogue is limited, and given its scope it is perforce breezy and not able to treat any specific element in depth, I wish he’d pushed a little harder on the question of why there is so close a connection between Book History studies and canonicity.
In contrast John Guillory’s argument that canons are not composed of individual works, but of assembled value sets that form a literary system, Lerer argues that the history of the book “itself may qualify the claim. Much speculation on the idea of the canon, and in fact much of literary history as a whole, still goes on as if literary works were somehow unbound to the physical objects that house them. Books are objects, though, and canonization is as much a process of se¬lecting space as of selecting value” (231-232). Setting aside the problem of prioritizing space as an issue and then, at the end of the article, dismissing electronic formats on purely aesthetic grounds, I’m not entirely sure that I fully buy the argument that canon-status follows purely from space issues. This seems most applicable to the study of anthologies from a specific period, say early to mid nineteenth century to the late twentieth.
Are questions of the study of Canonization and the study of Book History a chicken and an egg problem? Do scholars examine canonical works because we’re inherently interested in the material history of canonicity (and as a byproduct, reifying the canon), as Lerer explains the study of Anthologies (using, for his example, the 1950 Oxford Book of American Verse), or does the canon itself blind us to other positibilities? Does this focus on Canonical works amount to a teleological view of the history of the book? What about the Also Rans? What about failures? Are they too numerous to be interesting? Can a story be defined by the negative space around it – ie, a piece of canonical literature by its companions on the shelves, the medical books, the trashy ballads, the pious stories that no one reads anymore?
Or is it just that we focus on the current canon, or currently accepted deviations from it (non-canonical works by women, or subject peoples, or children, etc -- and those only at risk of being pidgeonholed), because that is what the Academy currently demands, and we would all like jobs at some point?
Redirecting
I originally started this blog as an assignment for a class on digital humanities. Now, however, I'm going to borrow a page out of the playbook of several scholars smarter than myself, and use it as a place to discuss the readings I must do over the next four and a half months before I take my Prelims exam.
The content will be mostly book history, bibliography, and a few strands of Early Modern history and literature. I don't really expect anyone will want to read it, but hopefully doing it this way will both keep me accountable, and help with my own retention of the material.
So here it goes.
The content will be mostly book history, bibliography, and a few strands of Early Modern history and literature. I don't really expect anyone will want to read it, but hopefully doing it this way will both keep me accountable, and help with my own retention of the material.
So here it goes.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Sounding the Deep: Representing "MT"
Gotta have a fondness for a critical, scholarly work that refers to its author-of-study by his initals. The Mark Twain Archive does a particularly good job of picking up on aspects of "MT"'s works that are of high interest in both the casual and scholarly communities. The section on Representations of Jim, for instance, gathers together illustrations of Jim over the various editions of the book, often providing side-by-sides of two illustrations by the same author. While it might have been nice to see all the illustrations side-by-side, the linear order of the discussion is clear and easy to follow.
The only quibble I have with the design of the archive as a whole is that navigation through some parts (ie, to the bibliography, or back to the home page) is controlled by two or three unlabled pictures at the bottom of the page, which are not necessarily intuitive, particularly for the more casual Twain reader. The more casual organization fit the more casual tone of the piece as a whole, though.
This is an interesting site to get lost in. The historical context for the various works included is fascinating. The layout and lack of certain navigational devices (ie, "breadcrumb" trails, continues tabs or menus) definitely leads to wandering rather than pointed searching. It seems to be an archive to be accessed by someone interested in Twain, perhaps someone researching a specific book or stage production. It has some good information on aspects of Twain's work that would be viewed as unusual today, such as the instructions to subscription sales-people, but that and other parts of the site which are buried several layers deep are sort of prizes for intrepid searchers.
Verdict: well written and witty, with what appears to be good scholarship, but the movement between items can be a bit "jumpy" and doesn't facilitate back-tracking to an earlier branching point for complex meandering. The search function itself is less prominent than one would expect [two layers deep], and it's sometimes difficult to trace quotes to their sources or find the bibliography to certain pages.
The only quibble I have with the design of the archive as a whole is that navigation through some parts (ie, to the bibliography, or back to the home page) is controlled by two or three unlabled pictures at the bottom of the page, which are not necessarily intuitive, particularly for the more casual Twain reader. The more casual organization fit the more casual tone of the piece as a whole, though.
This is an interesting site to get lost in. The historical context for the various works included is fascinating. The layout and lack of certain navigational devices (ie, "breadcrumb" trails, continues tabs or menus) definitely leads to wandering rather than pointed searching. It seems to be an archive to be accessed by someone interested in Twain, perhaps someone researching a specific book or stage production. It has some good information on aspects of Twain's work that would be viewed as unusual today, such as the instructions to subscription sales-people, but that and other parts of the site which are buried several layers deep are sort of prizes for intrepid searchers.
Verdict: well written and witty, with what appears to be good scholarship, but the movement between items can be a bit "jumpy" and doesn't facilitate back-tracking to an earlier branching point for complex meandering. The search function itself is less prominent than one would expect [two layers deep], and it's sometimes difficult to trace quotes to their sources or find the bibliography to certain pages.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Ricardo Del Campo
When I first approached the Wikipedia assignment, I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to edit. I checked out the section on "Printing," and couldn't find a way to edit the main entry. I was able to add Gaskell's bibliography text to the "Further Reading." I think my difficulty trying to edit that page may have something to do with its nature as a "funnel" page, meant to lead to other articles. Or maybe I'm just unfamiliar with Wikipedia.
On my second try, I attempted to find a page that was a. much smaller, and b. obviously needing elaboration. Both of these criteria were fulfilled by Richard Fields (printer). I was particularly amused by the statement, "In Field's era, the trades of printer and publisher were to some significant degree separate activities: booksellers acted as publishers and commissioned printers to do the requisite printing. Field concentrated more on printing than publishing: of the roughly 295 books he printed in his career, he was publisher of perhaps 112, while the rest were published by other stationers.[3]This is apparently supported by a 1931 article in the Library, but the idea that -- even working with the assumption that this guy has his numbers right -- by publishing "only" 112 books this was somehow a minor part of Field's business is pretty ludicrous, even "in Field's era."
The majority of the article centers not on the actual activities of said Richard Field, but on his association with Shakespeare. All the links at the bottom of the page center around Shakespeare folios, even those of other printers. So for this project, I set about correcting one or two of the egregious errors-by-omission. To avoid having to dig up citation materials buried in my computer, I settled for inserting a few notes on Field's activities as a protestant propagandist and his Spanish publications/printings. I also corrected the mistaken "question" that Jacqueline Vautrollier, his first wife, was possibly the daughter of his former boss, and not Thomas Vautrollier's widow. Given the lack of information on this well known printer, it's not surprising that J. Vautrollier, also a printer, doesn't have her own page.
On my second try, I attempted to find a page that was a. much smaller, and b. obviously needing elaboration. Both of these criteria were fulfilled by Richard Fields (printer). I was particularly amused by the statement, "In Field's era, the trades of printer and publisher were to some significant degree separate activities: booksellers acted as publishers and commissioned printers to do the requisite printing. Field concentrated more on printing than publishing: of the roughly 295 books he printed in his career, he was publisher of perhaps 112, while the rest were published by other stationers.[3]This is apparently supported by a 1931 article in the Library, but the idea that -- even working with the assumption that this guy has his numbers right -- by publishing "only" 112 books this was somehow a minor part of Field's business is pretty ludicrous, even "in Field's era."
The majority of the article centers not on the actual activities of said Richard Field, but on his association with Shakespeare. All the links at the bottom of the page center around Shakespeare folios, even those of other printers. So for this project, I set about correcting one or two of the egregious errors-by-omission. To avoid having to dig up citation materials buried in my computer, I settled for inserting a few notes on Field's activities as a protestant propagandist and his Spanish publications/printings. I also corrected the mistaken "question" that Jacqueline Vautrollier, his first wife, was possibly the daughter of his former boss, and not Thomas Vautrollier's widow. Given the lack of information on this well known printer, it's not surprising that J. Vautrollier, also a printer, doesn't have her own page.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Online Pedagogy
A pencil is a tool. It can be used for good (taking notes, doodling in your margins, shading in all the o's in a handout) or evil (stabbing your classmate.... Don't laugh, this happened to a student in one of my mom's 4th grade classes).
Online and computer-oriented pedagogical tools are tools as well. They are as good or evil as the pedagogy and thought put behind their use. Admittedly, it's harder to stab your classmate in a sensitive region with a power-point slide, but their use to convey information is limited mainly by the imagination and time of the slide-show creator.
I'll admit to being vaguely annoyed by what I see as the technological bias of power-point. Most of the preset backgrounds are vaguely techy looking. This annoyance is largely because my main use for powerpoint comes in classes titled things like "The Manuscript Book" and "Travel Narratives of the Renaissance." There are few preset background and color-combinations that truly evoke manuscript books, with the possible exception of the marble-background and the one which somewhat awkwardly resembles a wooden desk. Since I mainly tend to use this software to display comparative images of pages (as in "here you may see f.21r and f.21v, with the show-through of the verdigris pigment..."), what I need is a software that allows me to put two images side by side in a temporal sequence, and honestly, PowerPoint does that quite well. I think Edward Tufte's objections should not necessarily rest soley on the shoulders of PowerPoint, but on all the instructors and employers who threw the neophyte in the ocean and said, "I want a PowerPoint by Friday. Go." Without instruction, the unimaginative, rushed, and just plain bad PowerPoint Presentation is to be expected. At some point in the educational process, it would behoove us to tell students how to use this tool, just like at some point in our ancient past someone told us how to hold a pencil.
Distance or Online instruction, likewise, constitutes a set of tools which can be used well or ill, depending on teh pedagogy behind the tool. Some tools are useful for providing a basic background understanding to a range of users. My current favorite example is the Moma's What is a Print flash animation. It conveys a fairly simple definition of several artistic techniques in a way which is moderately interactive. It will not teach you to make beautiful etchings on your own, but this is not it's purpose. And this, I suppose, is the real annoyance David Noble is trying to get at -- by comparing Online classes to oldfashioned mail-order diploma mills -- that these online tools are misrepresenting themselves as the equivalent of an in-person education with a dedicated instructor.
Because without the directed pedagogy of an instructor, these tools cannot be as responsive to student needs as a class run by a competent pedagogue. Standardized content cannot adjust to the pace of the student. It cannot slow down when a class "isn't getting it." It cannot speed up when things are going smoothly. Standardization can't jive with responsiveness, the two qualities are antithetical. This doesn't mean that online classwork cannot supplement learning at a distance.
I recently found a really neat class website for an interdisciplinary class at the University of Texas. I found this tool through a google search, while I was looking for a basic definition of "sublime poetry." This tool, however, provides a greater context that I had anticipated for this term, and I like the juxtaposition of genres and disciplines it proposes. I might find a way to incorporate this into my own pedagogy at some point in the future. Do I think I get the same experience from exploring this website as someone who has taken Dr. Lisa L. Moore's class? No. But I do think it adds to my understanding of the period from 1700 to 1832 that it covers, and thus is educational for me.
I do wonder what we should make of the fine-print on the website, from a pedagogical point of view: "This site was created by Lisa L. Moore, Associate Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies at The University of Texas at Austin . It is for use by University of Texas students and scholars and is password-protected. Please do not reproduce material from this site without permission." I feel ok posting the link to it here on this blog, as I am a "scholar," albeit one no longer associated with UT (does being an alumna count?) and I'm not, technically, reproducing any of the material. I can't for the life of me figure out what she means by "password protected" as I can see most of the site without problems... I think there's one or two dead links. Is this just a covering-the-butt-note? How much does one expose oneself legally when one is pedagogical online?
Online and computer-oriented pedagogical tools are tools as well. They are as good or evil as the pedagogy and thought put behind their use. Admittedly, it's harder to stab your classmate in a sensitive region with a power-point slide, but their use to convey information is limited mainly by the imagination and time of the slide-show creator.
I'll admit to being vaguely annoyed by what I see as the technological bias of power-point. Most of the preset backgrounds are vaguely techy looking. This annoyance is largely because my main use for powerpoint comes in classes titled things like "The Manuscript Book" and "Travel Narratives of the Renaissance." There are few preset background and color-combinations that truly evoke manuscript books, with the possible exception of the marble-background and the one which somewhat awkwardly resembles a wooden desk. Since I mainly tend to use this software to display comparative images of pages (as in "here you may see f.21r and f.21v, with the show-through of the verdigris pigment..."), what I need is a software that allows me to put two images side by side in a temporal sequence, and honestly, PowerPoint does that quite well. I think Edward Tufte's objections should not necessarily rest soley on the shoulders of PowerPoint, but on all the instructors and employers who threw the neophyte in the ocean and said, "I want a PowerPoint by Friday. Go." Without instruction, the unimaginative, rushed, and just plain bad PowerPoint Presentation is to be expected. At some point in the educational process, it would behoove us to tell students how to use this tool, just like at some point in our ancient past someone told us how to hold a pencil.
Distance or Online instruction, likewise, constitutes a set of tools which can be used well or ill, depending on teh pedagogy behind the tool. Some tools are useful for providing a basic background understanding to a range of users. My current favorite example is the Moma's What is a Print flash animation. It conveys a fairly simple definition of several artistic techniques in a way which is moderately interactive. It will not teach you to make beautiful etchings on your own, but this is not it's purpose. And this, I suppose, is the real annoyance David Noble is trying to get at -- by comparing Online classes to oldfashioned mail-order diploma mills -- that these online tools are misrepresenting themselves as the equivalent of an in-person education with a dedicated instructor.
Because without the directed pedagogy of an instructor, these tools cannot be as responsive to student needs as a class run by a competent pedagogue. Standardized content cannot adjust to the pace of the student. It cannot slow down when a class "isn't getting it." It cannot speed up when things are going smoothly. Standardization can't jive with responsiveness, the two qualities are antithetical. This doesn't mean that online classwork cannot supplement learning at a distance.
I recently found a really neat class website for an interdisciplinary class at the University of Texas. I found this tool through a google search, while I was looking for a basic definition of "sublime poetry." This tool, however, provides a greater context that I had anticipated for this term, and I like the juxtaposition of genres and disciplines it proposes. I might find a way to incorporate this into my own pedagogy at some point in the future. Do I think I get the same experience from exploring this website as someone who has taken Dr. Lisa L. Moore's class? No. But I do think it adds to my understanding of the period from 1700 to 1832 that it covers, and thus is educational for me.
I do wonder what we should make of the fine-print on the website, from a pedagogical point of view: "This site was created by Lisa L. Moore, Associate Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies at The University of Texas at Austin . It is for use by University of Texas students and scholars and is password-protected. Please do not reproduce material from this site without permission." I feel ok posting the link to it here on this blog, as I am a "scholar," albeit one no longer associated with UT (does being an alumna count?) and I'm not, technically, reproducing any of the material. I can't for the life of me figure out what she means by "password protected" as I can see most of the site without problems... I think there's one or two dead links. Is this just a covering-the-butt-note? How much does one expose oneself legally when one is pedagogical online?
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
TextArc: The Tool That Wasn't
TextArc, which I've encountered before in a bibliography class, is one of those tools that makes you go "gee Whiz, now that I've got all this computing power, I can do amazing things with those stodgy old books."
But I'm not sure I understand fully what these amazing things are, or how best to use them. Part of this is my issue with running this incredibly memory intensive program; the first five times I tried it crashed my browser. I finally got the Alice in Wonderland to work, but I never did get The Three Muskateers to do so. I didn't realize there was a sound component until I read down the main page -- mostly because I browse with the sound off in my office, so as not to annoy my office-mates when I'm too lazy to dig out my headphones.
My ultimate problem with TextArc functionally boils down to a lack of imagination. I'm sure that if I were to study a text, and then run it through the program (on a much faster computer than mine), I would be able to see the patterns that should be showing up. Currently it looks like a really neato-screen saver, along the lines of Electric Sheep and I'm not sure I'm getting the logic behind what it's doing. I would be interested in a "guided tour" of the TextArc program; I found that I got more out of the Still Images section than running the program itself, because it came with more indepth explanations and didn't kick you out for accidentally clicking on something.
Upshot: I can see where this tool would be useful for a critical examination of a well-known text once one had time to learn how to use the features. My automatic reaction, when attempting to explore anew online feature, is to randomly click on things that look interesting. I suppose this is similar to babies putting everything they find in their mouthes to see what it tastes like, but it usually works. It is not, however, useful behavior for exploring TextArc, and as a result (well, plus the 5-minute-plus load times and the five-or-so crashes) left me feeling rather frustrated. My final reaction: Gee Whiz, I feel incompetent.
But I'm not sure I understand fully what these amazing things are, or how best to use them. Part of this is my issue with running this incredibly memory intensive program; the first five times I tried it crashed my browser. I finally got the Alice in Wonderland to work, but I never did get The Three Muskateers to do so. I didn't realize there was a sound component until I read down the main page -- mostly because I browse with the sound off in my office, so as not to annoy my office-mates when I'm too lazy to dig out my headphones.
My ultimate problem with TextArc functionally boils down to a lack of imagination. I'm sure that if I were to study a text, and then run it through the program (on a much faster computer than mine), I would be able to see the patterns that should be showing up. Currently it looks like a really neato-screen saver, along the lines of Electric Sheep and I'm not sure I'm getting the logic behind what it's doing. I would be interested in a "guided tour" of the TextArc program; I found that I got more out of the Still Images section than running the program itself, because it came with more indepth explanations and didn't kick you out for accidentally clicking on something.
Upshot: I can see where this tool would be useful for a critical examination of a well-known text once one had time to learn how to use the features. My automatic reaction, when attempting to explore anew online feature, is to randomly click on things that look interesting. I suppose this is similar to babies putting everything they find in their mouthes to see what it tastes like, but it usually works. It is not, however, useful behavior for exploring TextArc, and as a result (well, plus the 5-minute-plus load times and the five-or-so crashes) left me feeling rather frustrated. My final reaction: Gee Whiz, I feel incompetent.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Hypertext as persuasion
As part of our discussion of hypertexts and Choose Your Own Adventure Books, I found a link to an interesting BoingBoing article. For another neat example, see this image that I found from a comment on the BoingBoing article.
The mapping process here is what I was trying to talk about in class; trees that allow us to immediately jump to different branches of an argument. While this might not be good entertainment in a CYOA book, this is primarily because CYOA is about entertainment, whereas persuasive hypertexts would highly benefit from this flexibility.
The mapping process here is what I was trying to talk about in class; trees that allow us to immediately jump to different branches of an argument. While this might not be good entertainment in a CYOA book, this is primarily because CYOA is about entertainment, whereas persuasive hypertexts would highly benefit from this flexibility.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Stealing to feed the media appetite.
Several of my friends were willing to spill on their legal, semilegal, and pretty-illegal collecting habits, so long as I agreed to leave them anonymous or, in one case, identify only by their job. I'll note that the lengthiest answers were from librarians, which, since I was conducting some of the survey on my other blog, lead to comments such as "librarians are the biggest bunch of pirates i ever did see" and "information wants to be FREEEEEEEEEEEE."
Friend 1:
"I regularly rip CDs (of my own, my friends and Public Library) to my computer and from there to my mp3 player, which I believe is a double-violation of the strictest reading of DRM laws...
I justify this because it's MINE (library materials are also "mine" in the way that they are also everyone else's) and I should be able to enjoy music/audio books the way I want when I want if on computer, mp3 player or cd.
I also share these items at will to other people who might like them, and I snag music/video/books from people when they have things that I might like without regard to whether or not those people have acquired the items legally. Gran Torino was an awesome movie. It was even better snuggled up in bed instead of in an uncomfortable movie theather.
On a tangent: If I recommend a book to someone, and they like it, they often pass it around. I bought Predictably Irrational and after I read it, it passed through my mom, dad, sister, best friend and both her roommates. (the second has it still and I'll get it back from her eventually.) All that in less than a year. The same happened with My Jesus Year, My Father's Paradise and Traffic I feel like music and video stuff is kinda like that, except I know that the digital copies being easy and free and non-unique bit makes it totally unlike that."
Friend 2, "I frequently take music from friends -
and I have no other reason other than because I'm cheap."
Friend 3, the School Librarian (phone interview):
Pirates many things, but with lots of justification:
Music: pirates music that he already owns, but for whatever reason cannot put onto his computer, where he listens to most of his music. Otherwise, any music collection which is not released in the US is fairgame; British albums in particular.
TV/Movies: very similar to music, only what is not readily available in US (ie BBC), although he acknowledges that if he wanted to pay $$$$ he could probably get BBC as a premium channel.
Images: Attempts to use fair-use images from Flikr for things like business cards and classroom presentaitons. Has no compunctions about pirating porn. (he went on for a while. This was the short version. Will try to update later).
Friend 4:
"Personally I just pirate software that would in theory let me pirate movies, but that I just use to let me actually use my movies... I can explain in more depth if anyone wants..."
There seems to be a consensus that if you buy a piece of music/movie/item once, but the restrictions do not allow you to use the item as you want (ie, usually on the computer) that it is morally, if not legally, ok to rip it, either from your copy or anohter's copy.
Friend 1:
"I regularly rip CDs (of my own, my friends and Public Library) to my computer and from there to my mp3 player, which I believe is a double-violation of the strictest reading of DRM laws...
I justify this because it's MINE (library materials are also "mine" in the way that they are also everyone else's) and I should be able to enjoy music/audio books the way I want when I want if on computer, mp3 player or cd.
I also share these items at will to other people who might like them, and I snag music/video/books from people when they have things that I might like without regard to whether or not those people have acquired the items legally. Gran Torino was an awesome movie. It was even better snuggled up in bed instead of in an uncomfortable movie theather.
On a tangent: If I recommend a book to someone, and they like it, they often pass it around. I bought Predictably Irrational and after I read it, it passed through my mom, dad, sister, best friend and both her roommates. (the second has it still and I'll get it back from her eventually.) All that in less than a year. The same happened with My Jesus Year, My Father's Paradise and Traffic I feel like music and video stuff is kinda like that, except I know that the digital copies being easy and free and non-unique bit makes it totally unlike that."
Friend 2, "I frequently take music from friends -
and I have no other reason other than because I'm cheap."
Friend 3, the School Librarian (phone interview):
Pirates many things, but with lots of justification:
Music: pirates music that he already owns, but for whatever reason cannot put onto his computer, where he listens to most of his music. Otherwise, any music collection which is not released in the US is fairgame; British albums in particular.
TV/Movies: very similar to music, only what is not readily available in US (ie BBC), although he acknowledges that if he wanted to pay $$$$ he could probably get BBC as a premium channel.
Images: Attempts to use fair-use images from Flikr for things like business cards and classroom presentaitons. Has no compunctions about pirating porn. (he went on for a while. This was the short version. Will try to update later).
Friend 4:
"Personally I just pirate software that would in theory let me pirate movies, but that I just use to let me actually use my movies... I can explain in more depth if anyone wants..."
There seems to be a consensus that if you buy a piece of music/movie/item once, but the restrictions do not allow you to use the item as you want (ie, usually on the computer) that it is morally, if not legally, ok to rip it, either from your copy or anohter's copy.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Ganked from the LJ of a friend of mine, because it seemed relevant in the face of our launching into learning how to code:
Profanity in the Comments.
"When we created mozilla.org and released (most of) the source code to Netscape Confusicator 4.x, Netscape's lawyers made us go through a big "sanitization" process on the source code. Largely this consisted of making sure we had the legal rights to all the code we were releasing, and making sure every file had proper and accurate copyright statements; but they also made us take out all the dirty words. Specifically, "any text containing vulgar or offensive words or expressions; any text that might be slanderous or libelous to individuals and/or institutions." " © 2004 Jamie Zawinski
Profanity in the Comments.
"When we created mozilla.org and released (most of) the source code to Netscape Confusicator 4.x, Netscape's lawyers made us go through a big "sanitization" process on the source code. Largely this consisted of making sure we had the legal rights to all the code we were releasing, and making sure every file had proper and accurate copyright statements; but they also made us take out all the dirty words. Specifically, "any text containing vulgar or offensive words or expressions; any text that might be slanderous or libelous to individuals and/or institutions." " © 2004 Jamie Zawinski
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Digital Humanities: History and Future
I find myself having more difficulty with this assignment than I originally expected. This post may sound like a book-report in search of a point, but I think the usability of these sources is inherently informing of their content. If Humanities Computing is the act of putting the output of human creativity into a computer or other electronic device in order to save it for future generations, analyze its content, or cause it to be more easily and effectively accessed and utilized, then it is only successful to the extent that it fulfills these goals.
The readings seem to aim to provide a history of the field, and I actually expected Fraser’s “A Hypertextual History of Humanities Computing,” would be more like the University of Michigan’s timeline for digital technologies and preservation: (this is a really great at-a-glance timeline for technology) but focusing on technologies applied to the humanities. While clearly not finished yet (it currently has an extremely fragmentary feel) this seems like an accessible mode to present this information. The fragmentary nature of the writing makes me wonder how complete the information itself is; are there significant gaps in the units that are up, or is it just waiting for a final read-over?
The mapping exercise (found here), on the other hand, creates a visual overview of the many related fields touched on and influenced by Humanities computing. This visualization is necessarily cramped by the sheer amount of information it attempts to maintain. This is a system of visualization that would benefit greatly from the 3d technologies like those employed by the The Visual Thesaurus, or even the color-dimensions of other modeling software.
I feel like an extensive reading of the ListServ would, eventually, also give an overview of the field, but it isn’t set up for that manner of information retrieval. Like any topical discussion among specialists, the ListServ is chock full of jargon which I’m sure professionals in the digital humanities field understand. Perhaps ironically, my experience in library science makes some of the posts perhaps more obscure than they would be otherwise – I feel like the terminology is just off enough that I’m missing something important while skimming through the archive. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an effective search method for the archive, and the ability to organize “by thread” is only marginally helpful. There’s something that looks like a word-search under ArchTracker Display, but I couldn’t get it to work. Some sort of tagging system would be ideal.
The field of Digital Humanities/ Humanities Computing is about stretching our mental model of humanities to encompass a wider range of display, access, and analysis models. We understand how to access these new forms by employing established mental models (of how to use/examine/analyze “humanities” objects. New technologies allow us to stretch these models by creating new analogies to other, established models (folders, surfing, journaling, forums, classified ads). I feel like the current repositories for digital humanities texts about digital humanities (Ur-Humanities texts?) are currently not living up to the full potential of the medium.
The readings seem to aim to provide a history of the field, and I actually expected Fraser’s “A Hypertextual History of Humanities Computing,” would be more like the University of Michigan’s timeline for digital technologies and preservation: (this is a really great at-a-glance timeline for technology) but focusing on technologies applied to the humanities. While clearly not finished yet (it currently has an extremely fragmentary feel) this seems like an accessible mode to present this information. The fragmentary nature of the writing makes me wonder how complete the information itself is; are there significant gaps in the units that are up, or is it just waiting for a final read-over?
The mapping exercise (found here), on the other hand, creates a visual overview of the many related fields touched on and influenced by Humanities computing. This visualization is necessarily cramped by the sheer amount of information it attempts to maintain. This is a system of visualization that would benefit greatly from the 3d technologies like those employed by the The Visual Thesaurus, or even the color-dimensions of other modeling software.
I feel like an extensive reading of the ListServ would, eventually, also give an overview of the field, but it isn’t set up for that manner of information retrieval. Like any topical discussion among specialists, the ListServ is chock full of jargon which I’m sure professionals in the digital humanities field understand. Perhaps ironically, my experience in library science makes some of the posts perhaps more obscure than they would be otherwise – I feel like the terminology is just off enough that I’m missing something important while skimming through the archive. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an effective search method for the archive, and the ability to organize “by thread” is only marginally helpful. There’s something that looks like a word-search under ArchTracker Display, but I couldn’t get it to work. Some sort of tagging system would be ideal.
The field of Digital Humanities/ Humanities Computing is about stretching our mental model of humanities to encompass a wider range of display, access, and analysis models. We understand how to access these new forms by employing established mental models (of how to use/examine/analyze “humanities” objects. New technologies allow us to stretch these models by creating new analogies to other, established models (folders, surfing, journaling, forums, classified ads). I feel like the current repositories for digital humanities texts about digital humanities (Ur-Humanities texts?) are currently not living up to the full potential of the medium.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Preliminary Post
Testing out the whole professional blogging for ENG 5933; This post is just to get a feel for Blogger.
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