This course is an introduction to a number of the theoretical approaches used in studies of print culture. Readings, which include both primary material from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as contemporary critical essays, will be clustered around five themes: The Emergence of Print and a Print Culture; The Print Marketplace; Print Communities; Aesthetics, Culture and the Institutions of Print; and Media/Remediation. The course also incorporates workshops in website construction and research methods. Assignments will consist of two class presentations, a short essay, and a student website. While introducing students to the history of print culture, the course will also serve as an orientation to debates about the implications of the various theoretical approaches that can be adopted in print culture studies. We will be pursuing questions about what it means to study literature in terms of history, how specific forms of print media can be situated within particular fields of cultural production, how specific cultural fields are themselves shaped by wider struggles over different forms of cultural and civic authority, and, in keeping with the 2002-03 Print Culture Speakers Series, how local, national and global print cultures mutually inform each other.

*Students will choose the relative weight given to the essay versus the web site before submitting them for evaluation.

Sept. 5: Introduction to course: What is Print Culture?

WEEK ONE:

Sept. 5: Introduction to course: What is Print Culture?

Critical reading:

• Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, Excerpt from ch. 2: "Defining the Initial Shift: Some

Critical reading:

• Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, Excerpt from ch. 2: "Defining the Initial Shift: Some

and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1979),

1:71-159.

• Adrian Johns, "Introduction: The Book of Nature and the Nature of the Book,"

The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (U of Chicago P, 1998),

pp. 1-57.

• Walter J. Ong, ch. 1: "The Orality of Language" and ch. 4: "Writing Restructures

Consciousness," Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Routledge,

1982), pp. 5-15, 78-116.

Guest speaker: Paul Budra

WEEK THREE: Sept. 19

Introduction to Special Collections and research workshop with Heather-Ann Tingley.

Critical reading:

• Terry Belanger, "Publishers and Writers in Eighteenth-Century England," Books

and Their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Isabel Rivers (St. Martin's and

Leicester UP, 1982), pp. 5-25.

• Mark Rose, "The Author in Court: Pope v. Curll (1741)," The Construction of

Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature, ed. Martha Woodmansee and

Peter Jaszi (Duke UP, 1994), pp. 211-29.

• Trevor Ross, "Copyright and the Invention of Tradition, Eighteenth-Century

Studies 25 (1992); 1-27. (HANDOUT)

Primary texts:

• Alexander Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

WEEK FOUR: Sept. 26

Critical reading:

• Terry Belanger, "Publishers and Writers in Eighteenth-Century England," Books

and Their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Isabel Rivers (St. Martin's and

Leicester UP, 1982), pp. 5-25.

• Mark Rose, "The Author in Court: Pope v. Curll (1741)," The Construction of

Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature, ed. Martha Woodmansee and

Peter Jaszi (Duke UP, 1994), pp. 211-29.

• Trevor Ross, "Copyright and the Invention of Tradition, Eighteenth-Century

Studies 25 (1992); 1-27. (HANDOUT)

Primary texts:

• Alexander Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

WEEK SIX: Oct. 10

Guest speaker: Carole Gerson on "The History of the Book in Canada" project

Website workshops

WEEK SEVEN: Oct. 17

Critical reading:

• Michel Foucault, Excerpt from "What is an Author?" Language, Counter-Memory,

Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Cornell UP, 1977),

pp. 121-38.

• Martha Woodmansee, "Genius and the Copyright," The Author, Art and the

Market: Rereading the History of Aesthetics (Columbia UP, 1994), pp. 35-55, 157-63.

• Clifford Siskin, "Writing Havoc," Literature and Social Change in Britain 1700-

1830 (Johns Hopkins UP, 1998), 29-53. (HANDOUT)

Primary texts:

• Edward Young, "Conjectures on Original Composition"

Critical reading:

• Benedict Anderson, ch. 1: "Introduction," ch.2: "Cultural Roots," ch.3: "The Origins

of National Consciousness," Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and

Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (Verso, 1991), pp. 1-46.

• Anne McClintock, Introduction: "Postcolonialism and the Angel of Progress," and

Critical reading:

• Benedict Anderson, ch. 1: "Introduction," ch.2: "Cultural Roots," ch.3: "The Origins

of National Consciousness," Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and

Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (Verso, 1991), pp. 1-46.

• Anne McClintock, Introduction: "Postcolonialism and the Angel of Progress," and

Race,"Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (Routledge,

1995), pp. 1-17, 352-68, 397-99, 431-32.

• Robert Crawford, ch. 1: "The Scottish Invention of English Literature," Devolving

Primary texts:

• Elizabeth Wardlaw, "Hardyknute"

WEEK NINE: Oct. 31

Nation," Nation and Narration (Routledge, 1990), pp. 291-322.

• Srinivas Aravamudan, "Equiano and the Politics of Literacy," Tropicopolitans:

398-401.

Primary texts:

• Olaudah Equiano, "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano," pp.

Critical reading:

• Clifford Siskin, Part II: "Professionalism: The Poetics of Labor," The Work of

Writing: Literature and Social Change in Britain, 1700-1830 (Johns Hopkins UP, 1998),

pp. 101-52, 248-59.

• John Guillory, ch. 2: "Mute Inglorious Miltons: Gray, Wordsworth, and the

Vernacular Canon," Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (U of

Chicago P, 1993), pp. 85-133, 362-68.

Primary texts:

• Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"

WEEK TEN: Nov. 7

Critical reading:

• Clifford Siskin, Part II: "Professionalism: The Poetics of Labor," The Work of

Writing: Literature and Social Change in Britain, 1700-1830 (Johns Hopkins UP, 1998),

pp. 101-52, 248-59.

• John Guillory, ch. 2: "Mute Inglorious Miltons: Gray, Wordsworth, and the

Vernacular Canon," Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (U of

Chicago P, 1993), pp. 85-133, 362-68.

Primary texts:

• Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"

Critical reading:

• Lee Erickson, ch.1: "The Poet`s Corner: The Impact of Technological Changes in

Printing on English Poetry," The Economy of Literary Form: English Literature and the

Industrialization of Publishing, 1800-1850 (Johns Hopkins UP, 1996), pp. 19-48.

• Jerome McGann, "The Rationale of HyperText"

WEEK ELEVEN: Nov. 14

Critical reading:

• Lee Erickson, ch.1: "The Poet`s Corner: The Impact of Technological Changes in

Printing on English Poetry," The Economy of Literary Form: English Literature and the

Industrialization of Publishing, 1800-1850 (Johns Hopkins UP, 1996), pp. 19-48.

• Jerome McGann, "The Rationale of HyperText"

*NB: this text is also available in print in Radiant Textuality: Literature after the World

Wide Web (Palgrave, 2001), pp. 53-74, 250-52.

• Terence Hoagwood and Kathryn Ledbetter, "Introduction to The Keepsake"

Primary texts:

• Robert Burns, "Tam Glen"

WEEK TWELVE: Nov. 21

Critical reading:

• Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"

Illuminations:Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (Schocken, 1969), pp. 217-51.

• N. Katherine Hayles, ch.2: "Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers," How We

Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (U of

Chicago P, 1999), pp. 25-49, 297-300.

Primary texts:

• William Blake, "Songs of Innocence and of Experience"

WEEK THIRTEEN: Nov. 29

No class. Work on website construction.

CONCLUSION:

Papers due and presentation of websites