TRENT UNIVERSITY
MA IN ENGLISH (PUBLIC TEXTS)
ENGL 5000 – PUBLIC TEXTS
2008–2009
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course will explore the material and social production of texts and their circulation, and how these
shape publics into being and are shaped by them in turn. The material production of texts will be studied
as both technological and social practices. The circulation of texts will include traditional print
publication as well as other modes of circulation such as public readings, theatrical performance and the
World Wide Web. Publics will include historically defined communities of readers, communities
conceived in terms of identity (for example race, class, and gender), and imagined readerships constituted
by authors, texts and publishers
INSTRUCTORS
First Term
Zailig Pollock
132.1 Wallis Hall, Traill College
(705) 748–1011 ext. 6093
zpollock@trentu.ca
Office hours by appointment
Secretary:
Kim Fielding
English Graduate Office, 132.2 Wallis Hall, Traill College
(705) 748–1011 ext. 6256
Second Term
Michael Epp
132.1 Wallis Hall, Traill College
(705) 748–1011 ext. 6252
zpollock@trentu.ca
Office hours by appointment
Secretary:
Kim Fielding
English Graduate Office, 132.2 Wallis Hall, Traill College
(705) 748–1011 ext. 6256
REQUIRED TEXTS
 Gerry Adams. Cage Eleven: Writings from Prison. [1990]. Roberts Rinehart, 1997
 Taiaiake Alfred. Peace, Power, Righteousness: an Indigenous Manifesto. Oxford UP, 1999
 Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. Verso, 2006
 Ann Cvetkovich. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Duke
UP, 2003
 Franz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Richard Philcox. Grove Press 2005
 David Finklestein and Alistair McLeery (eds.). Book History Reader. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2006
 D.C. Greetham, Textual Scholarship: an Introduction. Garland, 1994
 Jurgen Habermas. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society. [1962] Trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick
Lawrence. MIT P, 1989
 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire.
Penguin, 2004
 A.M. Klein. The Second Scroll. Ed. Elizabeth Popham and Zailig Pollock. U Toronto P, 1999
 Virginia Woolf. A Room of One’s Own. Harvest 2005
1
 Michael Warner. Publics and Counterpublics.
PLEASE NOTE: THESE TEXTS WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY
BOOKSTORE. THEY ARE ALL AVAILABLE ONLINE, MORE DEPENDABLY AND AT
CHEAPER PRICES. IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO ORDER THE TEXTS. THIS IS WHY
WE HAVE SENT YOU THIS SYLLABUS WELL BEFORE THE START OF CLASSES.
MATERIAL FOR EACH SEMINAR
Required and recommended material, textual and otherwise, are indicated for individual seminars (see
below). Each week this will consist of some or all of the following:
 Readings from the above required texts
 Photocopies
 Material on myLearningSystem: PDF, audio and video files and URLs
 Web sites
COURSE STRUCTURE
The course will be taught in weekly 2-hour seminars. but Term 1 is primarily Zailig’s responsibility and
Term 2 is primarily Mike’s. but both will be available all year. The organization of the two terms will be
essentially the same with some minor differences in assignments noted below.
ASSIGNMENTS
There will be one essay and one response paper in each term (for details see below). However, in first
term, because of the more technical nature of the material covered (and because Zailig is different from
Mike), you will also be doing a couple of exercises, generally of a technical nature.
Essays
Each term you will write one substantial essay that critically engages the course material and issues.
While possible topics are provided in the syllabus, you will be encouraged to modify those topics or to
develop your own. You will be required to meet with Zailig (term 1) and Mike (term 2) to discuss your
paper in detail before your begin to write. You will be expected to conduct significant critical and primary
research for each paper. This will require you to cite critical/theoretical works in addition to those listed
in the syllabus. You will also be required to make explicit use of critical and theoretical concepts and
terminology introduced in the course. Essays, even very good ones, that do not fulfil these two
requirements will be return for revision. Because there will be exercises in term 1 but not term 2, the
essay in term 1 will be shorter than the one in term 2: 4,000 and 6,000 words respectively. Please note:
We take word length very seriously. Response papers, exercises or essays more than 10% over the
assigned word length will be returned and will be graded only if revised versions of the required length
are resubmitted.
Response Papers
Each term you will write one response paper of approximately 1500 words which will address the key
issue or issues that emerge out of the readings for that day. While such papers can take various forms,
most papers will summarize and critique the readings for the day from a specific perspective. You will
post a copy of your paper on MyLearningSystem before the seminar (by the preceding weekend at the
latest) and you will present it at the beginning of the seminar, dealing with any questions from your
instructors or fellow students which arise from it. All students in the seminar will be expected to have
read the paper and the relevant required texts before the seminar and to address the issues raised in the
presentation. Evaluation will be based on the paper itself and on how you deal with issues arising out of
the ensuing discussion.
2
There are two reasons why you will be required to present the paper in the seminar, even though you have
already posted it:
 to ensure that it is fresh in the minds of your fellow students
 to give you practice presenting material orally which is an important skill for graduate students
Exercises (Term 1)
In first term you will write two exercises (1000 words). These are to be posted on myLearningSystem,
(not handed in on paper) by the week following the seminar for which they are assigned, where they will
be available for your fellow classmates to read and to respond to if they wish. Exercise topics are
provided for most seminars (see below). If you choose to do more than 2 exercises your grade will be
based on the best two.
Participation
Each term you will be assigned a grade based on attendance, preparedness, and level of contribution to
classroom discussion.
Assessment
Term 1
 1 4000-word essay (20%) (due December 9)
 1 1500-word response paper (10%)
 2 1000-word exercises (10%)
 Participation (10%)
Term 2
 1 6000-word essay (30%) (due April 7)
 1 1500 word response paper (10%)
 Participation (10%)
Possible essay topics
Term 1
 Discuss issues of public texts which have been discussed in seminars in relation to one or more works
of literature. (A list of suggested works will be provided.)
 Is the medium the message? How deterministic is the technology of the production and dissemination
of texts?
 Analyze 2 or more editions of the same text in terms of material form, design, intended public,
editorial practice, etc.
 Create and publish a print or web text with a critical commentary on its expressive form.
 Compare contemporary responses to the coming of print and the coming of the internet
 Shakespeare and his works have been the focus of many debates over the years including:
1. Shakespeare’s text and the canon
2. Shakespeare as a public icon
3. The texts as literary and/or theatrical documents
4. Editing the texts
5. Shakespeare’s authorship of some or all of the texts in whole or in part
Explore how one or more of these debates are related to broader issues which we have been discussing in
term 1.
Term 2
 Define and speculate on the possibility of a postpublic.
 Describe future forms public texts will take and what they will do.
 Do a bourdieussian analysis of Web 2.0.
3
TERM 1
UNIT 1: THE EVOLUTION OF THE PUBLIC TEXT
SEPT. 9
SEMINAR 1: INTRODUCTION (“DAFFODILS”)
ISSUES
 Introduction to Public Texts
 “Daffodils”: a public text case study
EXERCISE
 Do your own version of the “Daffodils” portfolio using another text and citing at least half a dozen
print and web-based public versions of the text you have chosen.
or
 Describe some of the pictures on the walls of the English Graduate Office as illustrative of issues
in Public Texts.
REQUIRED TEXTS
MyLearningSystem
 “Lonely as a Crowd: William Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’ as a Public Text”
 “Books.” On The Media (51:14)
SEPT. 16
SEMINAR 2: PUBLIC TEXTS
ISSUES
 Interplay of society and technology
 Dynamic definitions of publics
 Formation and transformation of publics
 Conflict, opposition, and resistance to publics
RESPONSE PAPER
 The relationship amongst McKenzie’s 3 categories: orality, literacy, print
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Text
 D.F. McKenzie. “The Sociology of a Text: Orality, Literacy and Print in Early New Zealand.”
[BHR: 205–231]
Photocopy
 Hannah Arendt. “The Public and the Private Realm.” The Human Condition. [1958] Second
Edition. U of Chicago P, 1998: 22-78.
MyLearningSystem
PDF
 King Asoka. First Rock Edict.
 Marshall McLuhan. Prologue to The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man
 Herman Melville. “Bartleby the Scrivener”
4
SEP. 23
SEMINAR 3: ORALITY TO LITERACY
ISSUES
 The rules of conversation
 The difference between engaging in conversation and creating an oral public text
 The difference between oral and written public texts
RESPONSE PAPER
 Book 1 of Iliad and Aeneid as oral and literary texts respectively
EXERCISE
 Record and transcribe a brief conversation among two or three friends (preferably without letting
them know when you are doing it, though you should tell them at some point) and write an analysis
of it along the lines of the analysis in the Language of Conversation web site
Or
 Discuss an example of kinetic typography as a hybrid oral/written text.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Texts
 Walter Ong. “Orality and Literacy: Writing and Restructures Consciousness.” [BHR: 134–146]
 Roger Chartier. “The Practical Impact of Writing.” [BHR: 157–181]
Photocopies
 Albert B. Lord. “Homer.” The Singer of Tales. Harvard 1964: 141–157
myLearningSystem
PDF
 Homer. The Iliad, Book 1 (8th or 9th century BC). Translated by Samuel Butler
 Plato. From Phaedrus (app. 370 BC)
 Virgil. The Aeneid. Book 1 (29–19 BC). Translated by H. R. Fairclough
 Jane Austen. Opening of Persuasion
 James Joyce. From the Anna Livia Plurabelle section of Finnegans Wake
Audio
 opening of the Iliad (version 1)
 opening of the Iliad (version 2)
 opening of the Aeneid
 opening of Persuasion
 James Joyce reading from the Anna Livia Plurabelle section of Finnegans Wake
Video
 Jarratt Moody. What (based on Pulp Fiction)
Web Site
 The Language of Conversation
<http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/resources/resources/conversation/part2-B.html>
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
Web Sites
 Evolution of Alphabets
<http://www.wam.umd.edu/~rfradkin/alphapage.html>
 Writing: Mesopotamia
<http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/writing/home_set.html>
5
SEP. 30
SEMINAR 4: SCROLL TO CODEX
ISSUES
 Material differences between scroll and codex and implications for production, dissemination and
consumption of public texts
RESPONSE PAPER
 The metaphor of scroll and codex in Klein’s The Second Scroll
EXERCISE
 Discuss your sense of yourself as part of a public when viewing texts at the Petroglyphs, The
Parkhill Bridge underpass and the Beth Israel Synagogue
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Texts
 Greetham. “Making the Text: Bibliography of Manuscript Books”: 47–75
 A.M. Klein. The Second Scroll
Photocopies
 Zailig Pollock. “Unrolling the Scroll” and “Keri.” A.M. Klein. The Story of the Poet. U of Toronto P
1994: 3–9, 196–232
myLearningSystem
PDF
 Johanna Drucker. The Virtual Codex from Page Space to E-space
<http://www.philobiblon.com/drucker/>
Video
 Video: Medieval Text Support
Web Site
 Mikra’ot Gedolot
<http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/TalmudMap/MG.html>
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
Web Sites
 Medieval and Renaissance Book Production
<http://web.ku.edu/~bookhist/medbook1.html>
 Scroll and Codex
<http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana
/scroll/scrollcodex.html>
OCT. 7
SEMINAR 5: MANUSCRIPT TO PRINT
ISSUES
 Material differences between manuscript and print and implications for dissemination and
consumption of public texts
 How deterministic is the effect of technology?
 Implications for authors’ sense of role and relation to text and public
RESPONSE PAPER
 Defining the “impact of print”: Johns vs. Eisenstein
EXERCISE
 Describe the material form of a pre-nineteenth century book from special collections
Or
 Make your own version of one of the books from the collection of historic bookbindings (including
text).
6
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Texts
 Greetham. “Making the Text: Bibliography of Printed Books”, “Reading the Text: Typography”:
77–151, 225–270
 Elizabeth Eisenstein. “Defining the Initial Shift: Some Features of Print Culture.” [BHR: 232–254]
 Adrian Johns. “The Book of Nature and the Nature of the Book” [BHR: 255–272]
myLearningSystem
PDF
 Walter Benjamin. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
<http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm>
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
Web Sites
 The English Renaissance in Context: The Early Modern Material Text
<http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/furness/eric/teach/index.htm>
 GRPH 210: Typography
<http://www.toddroeth.com/class/grph_210/>
OCT. 14
SEMINAR 6: LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES
ISSUES
 Libraries and archives as means of preserving knowledge and creating knowledge
 Transformations of libraries and archives in the information age
RESPONSE PAPER
 Discuss Borges’ “Library of Babel” in relation to at least one of the other required texts for this
week’s seminar.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Photocopies
 Roger Chartier. “Libraries without Walls.” The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries
in Europe Between the 14th and 18th Centuries. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Polity Press 1994. 6188.
 Michel Foucault. "The Historical a priori and the Archive." The Archeology of Knowledge.
Pantheon Books, 1972. 126-131.
 Ed Folson. “Database as Genre: The Epic Transformation of Archives.” PMLA. 122.5 (October
2007): 1571–1579
 Jonathan Freedman, N. Katherine Hayles, Jerome McGann, Meredith L. McGill, and Peter
Stallybrass. Reply by Ed Folsom. “Responses to Ed Folsom’s ‘Database as Genre: The Epic
Transformation of Archives.’ PMLA 122.5 (October 2007): 1580–1612
myLearningSystem
PDF
 Jorge Luis Borges. “The Library of Babel”
 Robert Darnton. “The Library in the New Age.” New York Review of Books. Volume 55, Number
10 (June 12, 2008).
 Kate Eichorn. “Archival Genres: Gathering Texts and Reading Spaces”
<http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/Issue_12/eichhorn/index.htm>
7
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
myLearningSystem
PDF
 Maryanne Dever. "Reading Other People's Mail." Archives and Manuscripts 24.1 (May 1996):
116-129
 Directions for Change. Library and Archives of Canada (June 2006)
< http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/about-us/016/index-e.html>
Photocopy
 JoaAnn McCaig. “Introduction.” Reading In: Alice Munro's Archives. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2002.
1–23
OCT. 21
READING WEEK
UNIT 2: MAKING THE TEXT PUBLIC
OCT. 28
SEMINAR 7: AUTHORS
ISSUES
 Changing concepts of authorship in response to social and technological change
 Does the birth of the reader imply the death of the author?
RESPONSE PAPER
 Locate the writer as described by at least one of Woolf, Borges, Shelley, or Sidney in Bourdieu’s
“field of cultural production.”
EXERCISE
 Compare the official site and a fan site devoted to a contemporary author, such as William Gibson
or J.K. Rowling or Stephen King.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course texts
 Roland Barthes. “The Death of the Author.” [BHR: 277–280]
 Pierre Bourdieu. “The Field of Cultural Production.” [BHR: 99–120]
 Michel Foucault. “What is an Author?” [BHR: 281–291]
 Virginia Woolf. A Room of One’s Own. Harvest 2005
MyLearningSystem
PDF
 Jorge Luis Borges. “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”
 P.B. Shelley. From A Defence of Poetry
 Sir Philip Sidney. From A Defence of Poesie
RECOMMENDED TEXT
MyLearningSystem
PDF
 Christine Haynes. “Reassessing ‘Genius’ in Studies of Authorship: The State of the Discipline.”
Book History 8 (2005): 287–320
NOV. 4
SEMINAR 8: THE PUBLIC LIFE OF TEXTS.
ISSUES
 Changing modes of distribution of texts
 The effect of modes of distribution of texts on reader response
8
 Twentieth and Twentieth Century developments: book clubs, bestsellers, online marketing and the
long tail
RESPONSE PAPER
 Getting the text from author to public
EXERCISE
 Compare the most recent bestseller lists in the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, and the
Guardian (Guardian Unlimited Books).
or
 Go to Chapter’s and one other bookstore in Peterborough and compare the experiences.
or
 Compare the Canada Reads and Oprah’s Books websites..
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Texts
 John Brewer. “Authors, Publishers and the Making of Literary Culture.” [BHR: 318–326]
 Roger Darnton. “What is the History of Books?” [BHR: 9–26]
 Jerome McGann. “The Socialization of Texts.” [BHR: 66–73]
 Janet Radway. “A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste and MiddleClass Desire [BHR: 469–81]
MyLearningSystem
PDF
 Danielle Fuller. “A Reading Spectacle for the Nation: The CBC and ‘Canada Reads’.” Journal of
Canadian Studies/Revue d’Etudes Canadiennes. 40, 1 (Winter 2006): 5–36
Websites
 “Long Tail.” Wikipedia
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
Photocopy
 Boris Khlebnikov. “The Secret of the Bestseller.” Trans. Laura Givens. Russian Social Science
Review: A Journal of Translations. 39, 3 (January 1998): 78–86
MyLearningSystem
PDF
 Joseph Loewenstein, “The Script in the Marketplace.” Representations 12 (Autumn 1985): 101–14
Web Sites
 Oprah’s Books
<http://www.oprah.com/books/books_landing.jhtml>
 Canada Reads 2008
< http://www.cbc.ca/canadareads/>
NOV. 11
SEMINAR 9: COPYRIGHT & CENSORSHIP
ISSUES
 Copyright and the concept of intellectual property rights.
 Copyright and censorship as forms of protection. Who is being protected and why?
 Censorship and copyright in cyberspace.
RESPONSE PAPER
 Owning culture in Trinidad and Cape Breton: Comparing Alistair MacLeod’s “The Tuning of
Perfection” and Philip Sher’s “Copyright Heritage: Preservation, Carnival and the State in
Trinidad.”
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Text
9
 Mark Rose. “Literary Property Determined.” Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright.
[BHR: 308–317]
Photocopies
 Paul K. Saint Amour. “Introduction: Intellectual Property and Critique.” The Copywrights:
Intellectual Property and Literary Imagination. Cornell UP, 2003: 1–22
 J. M. Coetzee. “Taking Offense,” “Emerging from Censorship.” “Lady Chatterley’s Lover: The
Taint of the Pornographic.” Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship. U of Chicago P 1996: 1–60
MyLearningSystem
PDF
 Philip Scher. “Copyright Heritage: Preservation, Carnival and the State in Trinidad.”
Anthropological Quarterly, 75, 3 (2002): 454–584
 Benjamin Franklin. “An Apology for Printers”
 John Milton. From Aereopagitica
 The Statute of Queen Anne
Web site
 Freedom to Read – Censorship in Canada (“When the Censor Comes,” “Challenged Books List,”
and “Case Studies on Book Challenges”)
<http://www.freedomtoread.ca/censorship_in_canada/index.asp>
 United States v. One Book Called Ulysses
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Book_Called_Ulysses>
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
MyLearningSystem
PDF
 Oliver Gerland. “From Playhouse to P2P Network: The History and Theory of Performance under
Copyright Law in the United States.” Theatre Journal 59 (2007) 75–95
NOV. 18
SEMINAR 10: TEXTUAL CRITICISM
ISSUES
 Linguistic and bibliographical codes; text and paratext; substantives and accidentals.
 The relationship between textual criticism and literary interpretation
RESPONSE PAPER
 Discuss the contribution of textual criticism as defined by Greetham (“that part of textual
scholarship charge with interrogating the text and preparing it for public consumption”) to the
understanding of a text of your choice.
EXERCISE
 Analyze the expressive form of a page or cover/dust jacket of your choice.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Texts
 D.F. McKenzie. “The Book as an Expressive Form.” [BHR: 35–46]
 Greetham: “Criticizing the Text: Textual Criticism”: 295–346
copies
 Edward Bishop. “Featured Event. From Typography to Time: Producing Virginia Woolf.” Virginia
Woolf: Texts and Contexts: Selected Papers from the Fifth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf
Otterbein College`. Ed. Beth Rigel Daugherty, et al. Pace UP 1996: 50–64
 Michael Epp. “Full contact: Robert McAlmon, Gertrude Stein, and Modernist Book Making.” The
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 99, 2 (June 2005): 265-293
 Jerome McGann. “The Monks and the Giants” Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation. Ed.
Jerome McGann. U Chicago P 1985: 180–199
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
10
Photocopies
 Robert Hume. “The Aims and Uses of ‘Textual Studies’. “ The Papers of the Bibliographical
Society of America 99, 2 (June 2005): 197–230
 James L. W. West III. “The Iconic Dust Jacket: Fitzgerald and Styron.” The Iconic Page in
Manuscript, Print, and Digital Culture. Eds. George Bornstein and Theresa Tinkle. U of Michigan
P 1998: 269–283
NOV. 25
SEMINAR 11: EDITORIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE
ISSUES
 Shifting concepts of the role of the textual editor
 Textual editing in a poststructuralist age
 What is definitive? What is authoritative? Should we care?
RESPONSE PAPER
 Discuss the broader issues raised in the debate over the Oxford edition of Shakespeare’s plays
EXERCISE
 Do a modern spelling copy-text or multi-version edition of a short passage (a speech or a brief
exchange) from Hamlet, based on the Folio and/or “Good” Quarto. Explain why you chose to
approach the text as you did and explain any regularizations or emendations.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Texts
 Greetham. “Editing the Text: Scholarly Editing”: TS 347–372
Photocopy
 Michael Warren. “Quarto and Folio King Lear and the Interpretation of Albany and Edgar.”
Shakespeare, Pattern of Excelling Nature. Ed. David Bevington and Jay L. Halio. U. of Delaware
P 1978: 95–107
MyLearningSystem
PDF
 W.W. Greg. “The Rationale of Copy-Text.” Studies in Bibliography 3 (1950–1951): 19–36.
 Brian Vickers. “Are all of them by Shakespeare?” Times Online August 9, 2006
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
Photocopies
 Speed Hill. “Where We are and How We Got There: Editing after Poststructuralism.” Shakespeare
Studies 24 (1996): 38–46
 John Jowett. “Editing Shakespeare’s Plays in the Twentieth Century.” Shakesepeare Survey 59
(2006): 1–19
 David Scott Kastan. “The Mechanics of Culture: Editing Shakespeare Today.” Shakespeare
Studies 24 (1996): 30–37
Web Site
 Analytical Bibliography: An Alternative Prospectus
<http://ihl.enssib.fr/siteihl.php?page=55&aflng=en>
11
DEC. 2
SEMINAR 12: TEXT IN THE DIGITAL AGE
ISSUES
 Which is a better conceptual model for a website: codex or scroll?
 What is the difference between a page and webpage?
 The changing relationship between reader and author in the electronic age.
RESPONSE PAPER
 Print to Digital: In My End is My Beginning?
EXERCISE
 Analyze the expressive form of a web page of your choice
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Texts
 Jan-Dirk Müller. “The Body of the Book: The Media Transformation from Manuscript to Print.”
[BHR: 182–189]
Photocopies
 U. Agarwal-Hollands and R. Andrews. “From Scroll ... to Codex ... and Back Again.” Education,
Communication and Information. 1, 1 (May 2001): 59–73
MyLearningSystem
PDF
 from “A Gentle Introduction to XML
<http://www.tei-c.org/P4X/SG.html>
 Vannevar Bush. “As We May Think.” Atlantic Monthly (July 1945)
<http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush>
 Jerome McGann. “The Rationale of Hypertext.”
<http://www.iath.virginia.edu/public/jjm2f/rationale.html>
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
Photocopies
 George P. Landow. “Hypertext and Critical Theory.” Hypertext : The Convergence of
Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Johns Hopkins Press 1991: 1–34
MyLearningSystem
PDF
 Gary Frost.” Future of the Codex Book”
<http://www.futureofthebook.com/stories/storyReader$827>
TERM 2
UNIT 3: PUBLIC FORMATION AND TRANSFORMATION
JAN. 6
SEMINAR 13: REPRESENTATION
ISSUES
 Forms of government
 Forms of publics
 How are publics made? What are publics made of? What are publics made for?
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Text
 Hardt and Negri. “The Long March of Democracy”: 229–67
MyLearningSystem
PDF
 Declaration of Independence
12
<http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/declaration.html>
 The United States Constitution. <http://www.house.gov/house/Constitution/Constitution.html>
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
Photocopy
 Louis Althusser “Rousseau: The Social Contract.” Politics and History. [1972] Trans. Ben
Brewster. London: Verso 2007: 113–60
 Evan Watkins “Cultural Work as Political Resistance.” Work Time: English Departments and the
Circulation of Cultural Value. Stanford U P 1989: 248–78
JAN. 13
SEMINAR 15: THE NATIONAL
ISSUES
 How are national publics formed?
 How are national publics transformed?
 What interests are served by the belief in national identity?
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Text
 Andersen. “Introduction”, “The Origins of National Consciousness”: 1–7, 37–46
Photocopies
 Eric Hobsbawm “Introduction: Inventing Traditions” and “Mass Producing Traditions: Europe,
1880–1914” in The Invention of Tradition eds. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP 1983: 1-14, 263-307.
 Michael Warner. “Preface” and “The Cultural Mediation of the Print Medium.” Letters of the
Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America. Harvard UP: 1990:
ix–xv, 1–33
MyLearningSystem
PDF
 Frederick Douglass. “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
JAN. 20
SEMINAR 14: THE PUBLIC SPHERE
ISSUES
 What is the significance of perceiving a public in terms of a “sphere”? What is gained and what is
lost through the use of this term?
 How are publics made? What are publics made of? What are publics made for?
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course text
 Jurgen Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category
of Bourgeois Society. [1962] Trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence.
MIT P 1989.
JAN. 27
SEMINAR 16: READING AND FEELING
ISSUES
 What role do text and feeling have in the formation of publics?
 How do we critically engage popular literary texts as representative of public feeling practice?
13
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course text
 Hardt and Negri on affective labour in Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire.
London: Penguin 2004: 108–110
Photocopies
 Janice Radway. “The Readers and Their Romances.” Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy,
and Popular Literature. [1984] U of North Carolina P 1991: 46–85
 Raymond Williams. “Structures of Feeling.” Marxism and Literature. Oxford UP 1977: 128–135
Other
 Any romance novel (you will be asked to report informally on your book and your experience
reading it)
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
Photocopies
 Arlie Russell Hochschild “Exploring the Managed Heart.” The Managed Heart: The
Commercialization of Human Feeling. U of California P 2003: 3–23
 Elizabeth McHenry. “Introduction: In Search of Black Readers.” Forgotten Readers: Recovering
the Lost History of African American Literary Societies. Duke UP 2002: 1–22
 Barry Shank. “Structured Feelings amid Circulations of the Heart” and “Knitting the Social Lace:
The Use of Greeting Cards.” A Token of My Affection: Greeting Cards and American Business
Culture. New York: Columbia UP 2004: 1–15, 218–46
FEB. 3
SEMINAR 17: DECEPTION AND MANIPULATION 1
ISSUES
 How are publics shaped?
 How are publics deceived and manipulated?
REQUIRED TEXTS
Photocopies
 Horkheimer and Adorno. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” The Dialectic
of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. [1944 and 1947] Ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Trans.
Edmund Jephcott. Stanford UP 2002: 94–136
 Raymond Williams. “Advertising: The Magic System.” Culture and Materialism: Selected Essays.
[1980] Verso 2005: 170-95
Other
 We will be watching Saving Private Ryan together in the Graduate Colloquium Room at 7:30 pm.
FEB. 10
SEMINAR 18: DECEPTION AND MANIPULATION 2
ISSUES
 Do publics desire their own repression?
 How do we distinguish between coercion and consent, manipulation and persuasion?
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Text
 Adams. Cage Eleven
14
Photocopies
 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. “A Materialist Psychiatry.” [1972]. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota P 1983: 22–36, esp. middle paragraph of 29
 Raymond Williams. “Hegemony.” Marxism and Literature. Oxford UP 1977: 108–14
FEB. 18
READING WEEK
UNIT 4: FUTURES FOR PUBLIC TEXTS
FEB. 24
SEMINAR 19: TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE SYMBOLIC POWER OF TEXT 1
ISSUES
 What publics are formed by treaties?
 Who determines what constitutes such publics?
 How is the meaning of publishing – and the symbolic power of text – political?
REQUIRED TEXTS
Photocopies
 Sandra Gustafson. “Introduction” and selections from “Prologue: Language and Power in
Seventeenth-Century British America” and “Negotiation Power.” Eloquence is Power: Oratory &
Performance in Early America. U of North Carolina P 2000: xiii–xxv, 19–39, 119–140
Web sites
 The Historic Treaty Information site. Explore the Web site and read one or two treaties
<http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/pr/trts/hti/site/maindex_e.html>
 Petroglyphs
<http://www.ontarioparks.com/English/petr.html>
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
Course Text
 C.A. Bayly. “The Indian Ecumene: An Indigenous Public Sphere.” [BHR: 190–204]
MAR. 3
SEMINAR 20: TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE SYMBOLIC POWER OF TEXT 2.0
ISSUES
 How is the meaning of publishing – and the symbolic power of text – changing today?
 How are publics participating in publishing today? Think about this in relation to lulu, wikipedia,
public opinion polls, and focus groups
 How is the meaning of writing and editing changing in the context of open collaboration?
REQUIRED TEXTS
Web sites
 Lulu. Explore the Web site and imagine the shifting significance of what Gustafson calls “the
performance semiotic of speech and text” in the changing world of what it means to publish
<http://www.lulu.com/>
 “Web 2.0: What’s the Future?” KCRW The Politics of Culture
<http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/pc/pc070710web_20_whats_the_fut>
 Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE&eurl>
15
Other
 Buy and read a piece of fiction or poetry off of lulu and write the author
RECOMMENDED TEXT
Bata Library
 Andrew Keen The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture. Currency:
2007. HM 851 .K44 2007
MAR. 10
SEMINAR 21: COUNTERPUBLICS 1
ISSUES
 How are counterpublics formed?
 Who are counterpublics for?
 What do counterpublics do?
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Texts
 Warner. “Introduction,” “Public and Private,” and “Publics and Counterpublics”: 7–20, 21–64, 64–
124
 Cvetkovich. “Introduction” and “The Everyday Life of Queer Trauma.”: 1–48
MAR. 17
SEMINAR 22: COUNTERPUBLICS 2
ISSUES
 Are revolutions counterpublican?
 How useful is the concept of the counterpublic?
 What is the relationship between violence and the formation and destruction of publics?
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Text
 Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth
MyLearningSystem
PDF
 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels The Communist Manifesto.
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm>
RECOMMENDED TEXTS
Photocopies
 Michael Hardt. “Jefferson and Democracy.” American Quarterly (March 2007) Vol. 59 No. 1: 47–
78
MAR. 24
SEMINAR 23: RADICAL PUBLICS AND POLITICS
ISSUES
 How do manifestoes participate in the making of publics?
 How are publics radically formed? How are publics radically broken?
REQUIRED TEXTS
Course Text
 Gerald Taiaiake Alfred Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto. Oxford: Oxford
UP, 1999.
16
MAR. 31
SEMINAR 24: ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS
ISSUES
 TBA
REQUIRED TEXTS
 TBA
17