Blocks 1-2, 2010-11 |
Instructors of record:
Carol Neel, Department of History, Palmer 233
Phone 389-6527, e-mail cneel@coloradocollege.edu
Office hours 1-2:20, Tuesday and Thursda
John Williams, Palmer
Phone 389-6525, e-mail jwilliams@coloradocollege.edu
Office hours 1:30-3:00, Tuesday and Thursday
Further course staff:
Jessy Randall, Tutt Library, Special Collections
Phone 389-6668, e-mail jrandall@coloradocollege.edu
Steve Lawson, Tutt Library, Humanities
Phone 389-6857, e-mail slawson@coloradocollege.edu
Aaron Cohick, Press at Colorado College, Taylor Theatre
Phone 389-6376, e-mail Aaron.Cohick@coloradocollege.edu
Press course hours 1-3pm, Monday and Tuesday
Student mentors:
Connie Jiang
Phone 719-243-9314, e-mail connie.jiang@coloradocollege.edu
Stuart Hackley
Phone 720-341-7744, e-mail stuart.hackley@coloradocollege.edu
Course description and requirements
This two-block course will explore the ways in which ancient and subsequent European and Asian peoples have read, copied and used writing from the origins of script to the contemporary electronic book. The course's central readings will be major sources in the development of Western and Chinese civilizations. Attention to these works from both ancient and more recent pasts will stress the ways in which culturally normative texts both reveal and critique the power of the manuscript and printed word. Further readings by modern historians and critics will explore the book-making technologies known to historical readers and writers.
Students will write individual critical essays on the respective common readings and collaborate to choose, research and print in limited edition a text of significance for the cross-cultural history of the book. The faculty coordinators of this course, members of the History Department, will support students in discussion and written assignments, and Special Collections and Humanities librarians as well as the letterpress printer who oversees the Press at Colorado College will engage with students throughout, especially in preparation of their final publication. Class members will collaborate with these non-departmental experts in handling of manuscript and other primary source materials, researching these works’ contents and contexts, and producing a hand-set and hand-printed edition of the text they choose and the commentary they construct. Students will thus develop familiarity with modern research tools and postmodern critical frameworks as they enter into the experience of historians and printers of the past as well as the subjects whom their technologies of the book revealed. Although all course activities including the production of printed matter are grounded in prior cultures, their goals are contemporary: for student participants to develop awareness of the power of the written word and the indebtedness of even electronic information storage to the historical frameworks shaping literacy.
Class discussions as well as student writing and presentations will be centered on primary sources--the texts and artifacts left behind by ancients, medievals and moderns. Films and individual research will suggest the ways in which others of our times have understood the role of the book in two major world cultures, but emphasis here will be for this group--its students and teachers working together--to build a common sense of the past from the raw materials of historical literature and documents. An important and distinctive feature of our course will be a commitment to close reading of common texts. As a result, students will need to pace their preparation carefully, looking ahead and getting ahead on longer readings. Most importantly, all class participants will need to read with care and imagination, annotating hard copy of common texts thoughtfully and sharing their perspectives generously. They will need to bring the same level of focus and engagement to tehir work in library and letterpress studio.
Special opportunity in this First-Year Experience course will be the visits, in Block 1 of a prominent scholar of medieval manuscript production and, in Block 2, of an influential theorist of the contemporary book—both, as it happens, Canadians by birth or adoption. A variety of films will leaven the readings and these special lecture events.
During the first block, students will be expected to
During the second block, students will
Evaluation of student work will be based on
Each of these aspects of course work will be weighted equally. Because some of the tasks of Block 1 will come to fruition in Block 2, students will receive the same grade, determined at the end of Block 2, for both blocks. Short one-source essays may employ Chicago Manual of Style parenthetical reference form; research papers will require CMS-style footnotes. Papers, when due, will be submitted to the College's PROWL website in electronic form for peer critique and, as well, in hard copy to the instructor's "in" box in the History suite by the stated deadline. All work submitted must be prepared according to the Colorado College Honor Code and acknowledge that compliance in writing.
Course materials
The following books are available for purchase in the Colorado College Bookstore. Many of the
texts represented in these editions are available in other translations, but it will be helpful if class
members use the same translations so that we can refer to specific pages and passages during our
discussions. If students avail themselves of discounted prices from Web merchants, they should be
careful to find the editions listed.
Barber, Richard. Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms Bodley 764. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2006.
Li Fengjin: How the New Marriage Law Helped Chinese Women Stand Up. Translated by Susan Glosser. Portland, OR: Opal Mogus Books, 2005.
Miyazaki, Ichisada. China's Examination Hell: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.
O'Donnell, James J. Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Pearson, David. Books as History: The Importance of Books Beyond Their Texts. Newcastle, DE: Oak Knoll, 2008.
Plato. Phaedrus. Translated by Christopher Rowe. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.
Sima Qian, K.E. Brashier, and Raymond Dawson. The First Emperor: Selections from the Historical Records, Oxford World's Classics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Spence, Jonathan D. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. New York: Penguin, 1985.
Tacitus, Cornelius. The Complete Works of Tacitus. Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb. New York: McGraw Hill, 1964.
Voltaire. Candide. Translated by Robert M. Adams. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991.
Excerpts from the following further works will be available on the course’s PROWL website:
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Revised ed. London: Verso, 1991. Pp. xi-46, 187-206.
Bokenkamp, Stephen R. Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Pp. 230-271.
Chartier, Roger. "The Practical Impact of Writing." In The Book History Reader, edited by David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery . Pp. 118-42.
Cheek, Timothy. Mao Zedong and China's Revolutions. Boston: Bedford, 2002. Pp. 112-116.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, ed. Readings in Han Chinese Thought. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006. Pp. 156-166.
Darnton, Robert. “Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint Séverin.” In Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and other Episodes in French
Cultural History. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Pp. 75-104.
___________. "The Library in the New Age." New York Review of Books, 12 June, 2008. Accessible at
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/jun/12/the-library-in-the-new-age/.
De Bary, William Theodore, Irene Bloom, Richard John Lufrano, and Wing-tsit Chan, eds. Sources of Chinese Tradition. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1999. Pp. 1-23.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. x1-45, 286-311.
Feng Menglong. Stories Stories to Caution the World: A Ming Dynasty Collection. Translated by Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang. Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 2005. Pp. 261-289.
Grafton, Anthony and Megan Williams. Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea. Cambridge MA and London:
Belknap Press, 2006. Pp. 11-21, 86-132, 233-243.
Hansen, Valerie. The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600. New York: Norton, 2000. Pp. 17-53.
Hugh of St. Victor, The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor: A Medieval guide to the Arts. Translated by. Jerome Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Pp. 43-55. 61-62, 83-101, 120-134.
Johns, Adrian. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: Univerfsity of Chicago Press, 2000. Pp. 1-47, 622.638.
Li Yu. A Tower for the Summer Heat. Translated by Patrick Hanan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Pp. 83-115.
Luther, Martin. “Preface to the New Testament” and“Preface to the Epsitle of Paul to the Romans.” In John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections from His
Writings. New York: Anchor Books, 1962. Pp. 19-34.
Ong, Walter. "Orality and Literacy: Writing Restructures Consciousness." In The Book History Reader. Pp. 105-17.
Petrarca, Francesco. “The Ascent of Mont Ventoux.” In Ernst Cassirer et al., eds. The Renaissance Philosophy of Man. Chicago: University fo Chicago Press,
1956. Pp. 36-46.
Strassberg, Richard E. A Chinese Bestiary: Strange Creatures from the Guideways through Mountains and Seas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Pp. 161-
206.
Watson, Burton. The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Pp. 18-43, 138.
Young, Karl. “Notation and the Art of Reading.” In Jerome Rothenberg and Steven Clay, eds. A Book of the Book: Some Works and Projections about the Book and
Writing. 2nd ed. New York: Granary Books, 1999. Pp. 25-49.
The following films will be subjects for common discussion; copies for review will be available from the instructor:
Truffaut, François, dir. Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Kaige Chen, dir. The Emperor and the Assassin (1998)
Annaud, Jean-Jacques, dir. The Name of the Rose (1986)
Hustwit, Gary, dir. Helvetica (2007)
Schedule of readings, meetings, written work and presentations
Meeting topics are listed in boldface, special scheduling in red, and dates/topics of papers and presentations in purple. Students should note that not all reading assignments are of equal length or difficulty. It is wise to plan carefully for big assignments.
Class meetings will take place at 9:30am unless otherwise noted, and in Palmer 223 unless an alternate location is specified.
BLOCK 1
Week 1 (9/6)
Monday
Discussion: Thinking about the history of the book
Reading (linked on PROWL and distributed during NSO): Darnton, “The Library in the New Age.”
10:30am--class meeting after Convocation
2pm--introductory Press session (Taylor Theatre).
Tuesday
Discussion: China before the book
Reading (posted on PROWL): Hansen, “Beginnings of the Written Record”; De Bary, “Oracle Bone Inscriptions”; Watson, “Book of Odes.”
1pm—Press studio (Taylor)
Wednesday
Discussion: After the book?
Reading (posted on PROWL): Ong, “Orality and Literacy”; Chartier, “Practical Impact of Writing”; Young, “Notation.”
Thursday
9am--Writing Center session with director Tracy Santa (Tutt Library, Learning Commons)
10am–noon—individual paper appointments
Reading: O’Donnell, Avatars (entire text).
3pm--two-page paper due: Is Jim O’Donnell right that the contemporary crisis in the technology of reading and writing is comparable to earlier such junctures?
Friday
Discussion 9am--Reading Plato
Reading: Plato, Phaedrus, pp. 3-39 (227-257).
9:30am--small-group paper critiques
1pm—Film: Fahrenheit 451.
Week 2 (9/13)
Monday
Discussion: Speaking and writing in Mediterranean antiquity
Reading: Plato, Phaedrus, pp. 39-78 (258-279).
Revised essays due in class
1pm—Press workshop (Taylor)
Tuesday
Discussion: The uses of a written past
Reading: Sima Qian, First Emperor, pp. 3-52, 61-94.
1pm—Press studio (Taylor)
Wednesday
Discussion: Politics, history and literature
Reading: Tacitus, Agricola, in Collected Works.
Thursday
Film: The Emperor and the Assassin
Friday
Discussion: Public discourse and literary communities
Reading: Tacitus, Dialogus, in Collected Works.
3 pm--four-page paper due: What is the relationship between writing and power? Answer from the perspective of either ancient Chinese or classical Mediterranean literature,
although you may make reference to the other culture, as to critical readings bearing on both, as you find useful.
Week 3 (9/20)
Monday
Lecture: Manuscript books, manuscript hands
Discussion 1pm, Tutt Special Collections: Looking at medieval books
3pm, Palmer 230—Roger Reynolds (University of Toronto), “God’s Money: Eucharistic Hosts in the Ninth Century according to Eldefonsus of Spain”
LECTURE CANCELLED BECAUSE OF SPEAKER'S ILLNESS
Reading (posted on PROWL): Grafton and Williams, Chrstianity and. . .Transformation; Hugh, Didascalicon.
Tuesday
Discussion: Understanding nature and the supernatural
Reading (posted on PROWL): Tao Yuanming, “Reading the Classic of Hills and Seas,” in Watson; Strassberg, A Chinese Bestiary; “The Great Petition for Sepulchral
Plaints, ” in Bokencamp; Csikszentmihalyi, “Protective Talismans.”
1pm—Press studio (Taylor)
Wednesday
Bibliography workshop (individual research topics)--Tutt Library
Thursday
Discussion: Animal stories
Reading: Bestiary (entire text).
Friday
Discussion: Books as artifacts
Reading: Pearson, Books as History, pp. 7-76, 163-184.
2 pm--four-page paper due: How are The Classic of Mountains and Seas and the Bodley 764 bestiary alike/different? Focus your response on one text/image pairing from each text.
Sunday
6 pm, Palmer 233--dinner and a movie: Annaud, Name of the Rose
Week 4 (9/27)
Monday
Group presentations on making beast-books
1pm—Press workshop (Taylor)
Tuesday
Individual research day
1pm—Press studio (Taylor)
Wednesday
Individual projects progress reports (prospectus with central bibliography)
BLOCK BREAK
BLOCK 2
Week 1 (10/4)
Monday
Discussion: Humanism
Reading (posted on PROWL): Petrarch, “Ascent.”
1pm—Press workshop (Taylor)
Tuesday
Discussion: Reform
Reading (posted on PROWL): Luther, prefaces.
1pm—Press studio (Taylor)
Wednesday
Discussion, Tutt Library Special Collections: Looking at printed books
Individual research paper, developed prospectus and outline with completed bibliography due at 3pm
Thursday
Discussion: The advent of printing and the course of history
Reading (posted on PROWL): Eisenstein, Printing Revolution (excerpt).
Friday
Discussion: Revisiting the printing revolution
Reading (posted on PROWL): Johns, Nature of the Book (excerpt); Darnton, “Cat Massacre.”
Week 2 (10/11)
Monday
Discussion: Cultural encounters of the Book
Reading: Spence, pp. 1-127.
1pm--Press workshop (Taylor)
Tuesday
Discussion: Reading, imagery, and intellectual elites
Reading: Spence, pp. 128-268.
1pm—Press studio (Taylor)
Wednesday
Discussion: Examination culture in late imperial China
Reading: Miyazaki, China’s Examination Hell, 13-101, 111-129.
Thursday
Discussion: Printing and Popular Fiction in late imperial China
Reading (posted on PROWL): Feng, “The Luckless Scholar Rises in Life,” and “A Former Protégé Repays His Patron unto the Third Generation”; Li, “House of
Gathered Refinements.”
Friday
Individual appointments with instructors on research progress
Week 3 (10/18)
Monday
Discussion: Enlightenment and critical reading
Reading: Voltaire, Candide (entire text).
1pm—Press workshop (Taylor)
3pm, WES Room--Darren Wershler lecture, "Findables: Poetry without Poets"
Tuesday
9am--bagel and a movie: Helvetica
1pm discussion: Revolution and the Book
Reading (posted on PROWL): Mao Zedong, “Talks at the Yanan Conference on Literature and Art,” in Cheek; Li Fengjin (entire text).
Wednesday
Individual research/writing day
Thursday
9am--Research paper drafts due in multiple copies for workshopping
9:30am--Press workshop (continuing presswork for edition)
1pm and 2pm--paper workshops in small groups
Friday
8:30am--Exam preparation session
Reading (posted on PROWL): Anderson, Imagined Communities
Take-home exam: Comment, from your knowledge of the history of the book in two cultures, on Benedict Anderson’s argument that printing framed the modern world. Present your
answer in a crisp, five-page essay.
3pm--Exam due
Week 4 (10/25)
Monday
11am--research papers due
1pm—Press workshop (Taylor)
Tuesday
Press work day with special guest Barry Hirschfeld (Taylor)
Wednesday
9am--Group research/press project completed, course evaluation completion
9:30am--Wayzgoose at the Press (Taylor)
ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
This course's research tools sessions will introduce students to many web-based collections useful for the preparation of assignments and further exploration. It will also urge critical techniques for the assessment of WWW sites. The following solid websites are a beginning to useful web research:
for Mediterranean antiquity--Perseus, at Tufts
for the European Middle Ages--the Labyrinth, at Georgetown
for an individual bestiary--the Aberdeen Bestiary
for further medieval manuscripts, including beast material--the Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland
for the modern world--the Modern History Sourcebook, at Fordham
for the history of the book in particular--the Digital Scriptorium, at Columbia; Vivarium, at the Hill Monastic Museum and Library
for Asian Studies--the Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library, at Australia National University
for China--the China WWW Virtual Library Internet Guide for Chinese Studies, at Leiden .
______________________
The images at the head of this syllabus are from a tenth-century Chinese woodblock print depicting the Bodhisattva Manjusri and from the late antique Bible codex known as Amiatinus. The later shows the prophet Ezra as a late antique scribe working
