Lecture Supplementary Materials


 

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English 25 - Literature and the Information, Media, and Communication Revolutions

 

Lectures

1 (Intro to Course)

I. Overture: Literature Across Media Ages

III. The Postindustrial & Neoliberal Age

 

II. The Communication/Information Age

IV. Processing Literature

 


28 (Conclusion to Course)


Why full lecture PowerPoints are not online for students.

 

 

 

 

 

Lecture 1 (Introduction to the Course)

 

* From William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805), Book 6: 528-45 --

 

Imagination!—lifting up itself
Before the eye and progress of my song
Like an unfathered vapour, here that power,
In all the might of its endowments, came
Athwart me. I was lost as in a cloud,
Halted without a struggle to break through,
And now, recovering, to my soul I say
‘I recognise thy glory’. In such strength
Of usurpation, in such visitings
Of awful promise, when the light of sense
Goes out in flashes that have shewn to us
The invisible world, doth greatness make abode,
There harbours whether we be young or old.
Our destiny, our nature, and our home,
Is with infinitude—and only there;
With hope it is, hope that can never die,
Effort, and expectation, and desire,
And something evermore about to be.

 

* IBM's "Can You See It?" advertising campaign (2003)

 

 


 

I. Overture: Literature Across Media Ages

 

 

Lecture 2 (The Idea of Media)

Historical Table of Media, Communication, & Computing Ages

 

* Google Ngram Viewer

 

* From the Oxford English Dictionary:

 

* Ted Nelson, inventor of the concept of hypertext (beginning in the 1960s)

 

* Wolfgang Schivelbusch. The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. [German edition pub. 1977]

 

* Cubism

 

 

 

Lecture 3 (From Oral to Writing Media)

 

* Past media ages studied by scholars like Walter Ong include:

 

* Since McLuhan, the "history of the book" field has flourished as a kind of media theory. The field includes:

    A current, new way of thinking about media that encompasses both past media and contemporary digital is “media archaeology” (as in the work of Friedrich Kittler)


* Walter Ong on orality

 

* Milman Parry's work on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, based on:

 

* Old English example of oral poetry: "Caedmon's Hymn"

 

* Contemporary example of oral poetry with ancient oral-culture roots:

 

 

 

 

 

Lecture 4 (continued)

 

* Geoffrey Chaucer, Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: parallel original and translated texts.

 

* The Phrase Finder (phrases, sayings, proverbs, and idioms). (Compare to what Walter Ong calls the "close to the lifeworld" sayings of oral culture)

 

* Compare what Walter Ong calls the "agonistically toned" nature of oral cultures to the Old English poem “The Battle of Maldon” (911 A.D.) about battle between the English and the Vikings (in a modern translation):

Byrhtnoth spoke back, raising up his shield,
waving his slender spear, speaking in words,
angry and resolute, giving them answer:

“Have you heard, sailor, what these people say?
They wish to give you spears as tribute,
the poisonous points and ancient swords,
this tackle of war that will do you no good in battle.
Herald of the brim-men, deliver this again,
say unto your people a more unpleasant report:
here stands with his troops a renowned earl
who wishes to defend this homeland,
the country of Æthelred, my own lord,
and his citizens and territory.

 

* Lake Nakuru, Kenya

 

* William Faulkner. "The Bear." In Go Down, Moses, and Other Stories.  New York: Random House, 1942.

 

 

 

 

 

Lecture 5 ("Close Reading," Past and Present)

 

* M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, England 1066-1307, 2d ed. (Blackwell, 1993)

 

* Denise Schmandt-Besserat, "The Evolution of Writing" (a good, short introduction to the invention of writing, beginning with clay tokens for counting and their clay envelopes).

 

* "Render" -- "late Middle English: from Old French rendre, from an alteration of Latin reddere ‘give back,’ from re- ‘back’ + dare ‘give.’ The earliest senses were ‘recite,’ ‘translate,’ and ‘give back’ (hence ‘represent’ and ‘perform’)…"

 

* Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)

 

* André Kertész (1894-1985)

 

* Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Poetry: An Anthology for College Students, 1st ed. (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1938)

 

 

 

 

 

Lecture 6 ("Distracted Reading" and "Distant Reading" in the Information Age)

 

* Paradigm of he Wasp/Orchid -- Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1987).

 

* Paradigm of symbiogenesis (Euplotidum microorganism with ectosymionts related to Verrucomicrobia bacteria;  & Termite digestive system) -- Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species (2002)

 

* Online web page discussed in lecture: Danièle Cybulskie, "Five Books to Start Your Journey Back to the Middle Ages," Medievalists.net, 27 November 2014.

 

* Rudolf Flesch, Why Johnny Can't Read Why Johnny—And What You Can Do About It (1955)

 

* Pry iPad novella -- Tender Claws (Danny Cannizzaro and Samantha Gorman), Pry. Apple iOS app for iPad.  2014.

 

* Alan Liu, "A New Metaphor for reading." In New York Times Room for Debate forum on "Does the Brain Like E-Books?", 14 October 2009.

 

* Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man (1490)

 

* Source for image showing a woman with technologies in place of da Vinci's Vitruvian Man: Katie Warren, "Marshall McLuhan and the Extension of the Human Body.," Ambient Environments (blog), no date.

 

* On the "prosthesis" theory of technology and Marshall McLuhan -- Sarah Coffey,  "Prosthesis," The Chicago School of Media Theory, no date.

 

* N. Katherine Hayles, Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Unconscious (2017)

 

 

 

Lecture 7 (continued)

 

* Book artists shown at beginning of lecture:

 

* Exodus 3:14 (King James Bible): 

 

* Codex Sinaiticus, the earliest known manuscript of the Christian Bible, compiled in the 4th century A.D.

 

* Pry novella for iPad, by Tender Clase (Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro), 2014.

 

* The "conversion" moment in William Gibson's poem in Agrippa (A Book of the Dead):

*Voyant Tools

 

* "Incunabula" = early printed books

 

 

 


 

II. The Communication/Information Age

 

 

Lecture 8 (The Communications Revolution & the Digital Principle)

 

* Albert Borgmann, Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium (1999):

* Karl Bodmer, Assiniboin Medicine Sign (1833):

Karl Bodmer, Assiniboin Medicine Sign (1833) 

 

* Critiques of the transmission model of communication: see Daniel Chandler, "The Transmission Model of Communication," 1995)

 

 

 

 

Lecture 9 (The Computer Revolution (1): History of the Computer)

 

* Pre-20th-century computing:

 

* 20th-century electronic digital computing:

 

 

 

 

Lecture 10 (The Computer Revolution (2): Rise of the Network)

 

* The Personal Computer and the Network vs. the mainframe:

 

* Early hacker culture (e.g., Steve Wozniak in garage working on the early Apple computers) and "computer lib" or cyberlibertarian culture (e.g., Ted Nelson)

 

* The Rise of the Personal Computer

 

* The Rise of the Internet

 

* Early humanities use of the Internet at UCSB

 

* Conceptual Paradigm of Personal Computing / The Internet

 

 

 

 

 

Lecture 11 (The Computer Revolution (3): The Emergence of Digital "New Media")

 

* "New media" is media that has been influenced by the new communications and computing technologies.

 

* Walter Ong on the original "new media" of writing technologies

 

* Digital new media today includes its own version of accounts and lists: e.g., list structures in HTML

 

* Lev Manovich's Analysis of New Media Principles

 

* Web 1.0 --> Web 1.5 --> Web 2.0

 

* The Rise of Social Media

 

 

 

 

 

Lecture 12-15 (Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49)

 

* (Partial) Definition of Modern and Contemporary Literature

 

* Information about Thomas Pynchon

 

* Pynchon's Writings

 

* Passages from The Crying of Lot 49 quoted or discussed in lecture (cited by page number from the edition used for the course)

 

* Films and TV Shows of the 1960s mentioned in lecture as comparisons for The Crying of Lot 49 and its world:

 

* Remedio Varos, Bordando el Manto Terrestre (1961)

 

* A painting of Ovid's Narcissus and Echo myth :

 

* The idea of a MacGuffin in film history

 

* References made in lecture in relation to the 1960s contexts of counterculture and the War on Poverty and Civil Rights Movement:

 

* Thomas Pynchon, "A Journey Into the Mind of Watts," New York Times, June 12, 1966.

 

* Thomas Pynchon, "Entropy" ( (short story originally published 1960, included in his collection of stories, Slow Learner: Early Stories, 1984) 

 

* Spray paint of the "muted post horn" around UCSB campus in 2007 (see Inside Higher ED news story, with quotes from Prof. Liu on the event).

 

 

 

 

Lecture 16 (Midterm Exam)

 

[No lecture supplementary notes for this day]

 

 


 

III. The Postindustrial & Neoliberal Age

 

 

Lectures 17-20 
(Postindustrial "Knowledge Work" / Neoliberal "Networked Society" / Against All the Above)

 

* Comparisons to

 

* Taylorisim & Scientific Management

 

* Fordism

 

* "Smart" Work (Knowledge Work)

  1. Business = Life
  2. Business = Change
  3. Business = Knowledge
    • Rise of Knowledge Work in 20th Century:
      • “Dumbing down" of industrial work was accompanied by rise of "smart" class of professional managers and clerical workers.
      • The “smart" class grew as the original American middle class (farmers, craftsmen, small business owners) was replaced by a “new middle class" (salaried managers and clerical workers).
      • “Service" work grew in importance relative to manufacturing.
      • The "New Class" ("professional-technical-managerial") arose.
      • Management tasks are also now increasingly pushed down the ranks to line workers themselves (e.g., "teams").
    • Case Study: Business in the 1950s:
      • C. Wright Mills, White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951)
      • William H. Whyte, Jr., The Organization Man (1956)
  4. Knowledge Work = IT Work
    • The "Productivity Paradox"
      • Thomas K. Landauer, The Trouble with Computers: Usefulness, Usability, and Productivity (1995)
      • Stephen S. Roach, Technology Imperatives (1992)
      • Paul A. Strassman, Information Payoff: The Transformation of Work in the Electronic Age (Macmillan, 1985)
      • New York Times, “Why Is Productivity So Weak? Three Theories” (28 April 2016)
  5. Knowledge Work + IT Work = "Downsizing"
  6. Knowledge Work + IT Work = "Reengineering," "Restructuring," "Team work"
    • Reengineering:
      •     "kan-ban" (Toyota card-sign resupply system)
             "lean production"
            "flexible production"
            "just-in-time manufacturing"
            "designed-for-manufacture"
            "total-quality control" (Edwards Deming, Six Sigma)
    • Restructuring:
      • Analogy of World War II Battle of Britain RAF "Vic" formations versus German Luftwaffe "Fingers four" formation
      • Chiat/Day advertising firm's offices, NYC
    • Teamwork:
      • Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline (1990) p. 4, 10
      • William H. Davidow & Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation (1992), p. 198-99
      • Joseph H. Boyett & Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992), p. 255

 

* Neoliberalism (and the "Networked Society")

 

* "Against All the Above"

 

 

 

 

Lecture 21-24 (William Gibson, Neuromancer)

 

* Quotation about the relation of cyberpunk science fiction to the postindustrial world

 

* The Rise of Science Fiction

 

* Cyberpunk Science Fiction

 

* William Gibson's Fiction

 

* William Gibson's Neuromancer

 

* Marjorie Luesebrink 

 

* Closing Speculation for This Unit of the Course

 

 

 


 

IV. Processing Literature

 

 

Lecture 25 (What is Text in the Digital Age? -- The Logic of Text Encoding)

 

* Alan Liu's DH Toychest site

 

* Main topics of lecture:

 

 

 

 

 

Lecture 26 (Text Analysis and Literature)

 

* Comparison of Bottom-up Machine Learning Approaches of Text Analysis to Text Encoding

 

* Text Analysis Tools (tools mentioned in lecture that can be used by students)

 

* Demos in Lecture of Tools

 

* What is it possible to learn from text analysis?

 

 

 

 

 

Lecture 27 (Topic Modeling and Literature)

 

* Overview of Topic Modeling

 

* Topic Modeling Tools (tools mentioned in lecture that can be used by students)

 

* Example Topic Models 

 

* Other Introductory Explanations of Topic Modeling

 

* "So What?" -- What We Learn From Topic Modeling

 

 

 

Lecture 28 (Conclusion to Course)

 

Social Network Analysis and Literature:

 

* Social Network Analysis Tools

 

Spatial Analysis :

 

* Tools (heavyweight to middleweight)

 

* Tools (lightweight)

 

The Noise of Literature:

 

* Deformance Tools

 

 

 

 

 

 


Why full lecture PowerPoints are not online for students: