This course provides a broad survey and introduction to theoretical issues in the history of the book. As our culture transitions from print to digital media, interest in the book as a material artifact has exploded, leading to a dynamic field of study that now encompasses both traditional disciplines like bibliography, antiquarianism, philology, and textual scholarship, as well as more recent theories in communication studies, material culture, and media theory.
This course will survey a few significant trends in book history through theoretical readings, historical scholarship, and literary case studies, with specific attention placed on reverse engineering the book as technology of writing—a material artifact for storing, processing, and transmitting the elementary bits of culture (the sounds, letters, and other notations that constitute texts, narrative, information, and history). Topics to investigate will include: the history of alphabetic writing; the invention of moveable type; the history of literacy and alphabetization, specifically as it registers in children’s literature; the circulation of information and other media in the Enlightenment; the industrialization of book production in the nineteenth century; the rise of authorship, copyright, and other publishing institutions; the evolution of design, format, and other diagrammatic interfaces of the book; the role of readers in the production of community; and the influence of digital technologies in reshaping the basic elements of literacy and publishing.
Critical and historical essays will include foundational work by Michael Foucault, Walter Ong, Roger Chartier, Jerome McGann, D.F. McKenzie, Elizabeth Eisenstein, and Peter Stallybrass, as well as selected readings in literary and media theory by Friedrich Kittler, Lisa Gitelman, Meredith McGill, Andrew Piper, Matthew Kirschenbaum, and N. Katherine Hayles. Literary case studies will include Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography and Mark Twain’s No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, in addition to a few poems and short stories. Course requirements include active participation in discussions and writing assignments, a reading journal, an oral presentation, a short history of an archival object, and a final paper based on materials from the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection.
