Syllabus for English 395:
History and Future of the Book (Fall 2023)

(Brief initial readings)

• Medieval Helpdesk (short video)
• Matthew Kirchenbaum, "Bookscapes: Modeling Books in Electronic Space" (PWeb Documents)
• Jessica Pressman, introduction to Bookishness
(PWeb Documents)
• PDF document: Erik Simpson, ChatGPT (and Its Relatives) and College Writing: A Quick Guide for Students

Introduction and first day

Quick first assignments by the end of today:

1. Put a paragraph of self-introduction in the "Self-Introductions" document in our Classwork Document folder, and
2. As the first entry in your Classwork Document, write a brief description of one memory you have about the physicality of a book--writing in one, tearing one, hitting something with one, whatever you like.

• Robert Darnton, excerpt from "What Is the History of Books?" (PWeb Documents)
• Readings for Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool":
  • Short biography of Brooks from the Poetry Foundation
  • "We Real Cool" in Poetry magazine, September 1959. Look at the setting of the poem itself and also use the "Read Issue" button on the web page to look at the setting of the poem within the magazine issue.
  • 1966 Broadside Press poster of "We Real Cool."
  • "We Real Cool" web setting and audio recording on the Poetry Foundation website. Hit the play button (arrow in a circle) to the right of the poem’s title to hear the audio.
  • "We Real Cool" audio recording on the Library of Congress website. Start listening at the 20:00 mark to hear Brooks’s introduction to the poem as well as the poem itself.

Part One: Following the example of Darnton's communications circuit, make your own diagram of a communications circuit based on an aspect of your own experience. For instance, you could diagram the flow of communications in a workplace, a class, a team or activity, or part of your family life. Follow the examples of today's reading, in creating a fairly simple visual representation that describes a circuit, meaning that the communication forms a repeating pattern. You can draw the circuit by hand or digitally. By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, post an image of your circuit in your classwork document.

Part Two: Briefly but attentively, look over the Brooks readings and be ready to talk about them in an in-class exercise.

• Henry Petroski, "Order, Order" from The Book on the Bookshelf (PWeb Documents)
• Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel" from Ficciones (PWeb Documents)
• Ohkamp, Organizing the Bookcase (very short video)
• xkcd on Instagram: yet another way to organize your bookshelf

The collection description assignment is due at 5:00 on Friday. Paste it into your Classwork Document.

In class today, you will meet with the library group in Special Collections, who will introduce you to the library in a tour tailored for the purposes of our class, with emphasis on the idea of the book collection.

Collection description due at 5:00. Submit the collection description in your classwork document.

• Dudley Randall, "Broadside Press: A Personal Chronicle" (PWeb Documents)
• Broadside Press response to inquiry letter, from Julius E. Thompson, Dudley Randall, Broadside Press, and the Black Arts Movement in Detroit, 1960-1995 (PWeb Documents)
• The Underground Press Syndicate, "How to Publish Your Very Own Underground Newspaper" (1971) (PWeb Documents)

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write an entry of at least 200 words about some part of today's printing or reading culture that today's readings helped you think about in a new way.

• Amaranth Borsuk, The Book, 135-139
• Jenna Wortham, "Why the Internet Didn’t Kill Zines" (also in PWeb Documents)
• Zine Librarians’ Code of Ethics, 2015 version (you can read it on the web or download it as a printable PDF zine!)
• Margarete Miller, "What’s a zine and how do I make one?" (11-minute video)

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write at least 50 words about each of three ideas you might like to explore in making your own zine: one idea about being a fan of something and wanting to share your appreciation; one expressing information you want to share with a community; and one remixing found materials. (The first two ideas can also involve remixing found materials, but the third should be a different idea.)

Zine assignment due at 1:00 a.m. the night before class. Submit the zine assignment in your classwork document, portraying the zine itself with an inserted photo, and bring your zine to class to share with your classmates.

• Borsuk, The Book, Chapter 1: The Book As Object

• Documentary: The Machine that Made Us (2008)
• Tom Johnson, "Different Under the Quill: On Paper"
• From the University of Iowa's Center for the Book: Chancery Papermaking (2013)
• Optional bonus video: Paper Making by Hand at Hayle Mill, England (1976)

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write an entry of at least 200 words about some part of today's printing or reading culture that today's readings helped you think about in a new way.

• Borsuk, Chapter 2: Book as Content
• Charles Chesnutt, "Baxter's Procrustes"
• Christy Hyman, "Charles W. Chesnutt: A Biographical Sketch"

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write an entry of at least 200 words that puts Borsuk's chapter in conversation with the Chesnutt readings in some way.

• Werner, Studying Early Printed Books, Part 4: Looking at Books

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, make two lists, with a brief explanatory comment on each item: a list of three things you’re especially interested in exploring and a list of at least two things you feel you don’t understand especially well. (Some items could be in both categories.)

Begin your work for the book description assignment: read the assignment itself, choose the book you want to describe, and take some initial notes about your observations and questions. By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, enter some of those initial notes in your classwork document. Come to class ready to work further on the assignment.

• Film: Helvetica (2007), directed by Gary Hustwit
• Podcast episode (for listening, but you may also want to see the images on the web page to understand what the typefaces look like): 99pi on Fraktur
• Animated short by Ben Barrett-Forrest: The History of Typography

Assignment: using the potato you have been given in class, create two letter stamps: cut the potato in half, print out two letters from two different styles (gothic, roman, modern, experimental), trace the outline of each letter onto half of your potato, and carve out the negative space to create a letter stamp. Bring your potato stamps to class.

Book description due at the time of your scheduled conference with me. In place of a regular class meeting, your assignment and class session will consist of the book description conversation.

• Molly McCarthy, "Redeeming the Almanac: Learning to Appreciate the iPhone of Early America"
• Sarah Werner on very early almanacs
• Optional bonus content: Lalita Kaplish (editor), "Modern Encounters With a Medieval Almanac," Wellcome Collection

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write an entry of at least 200 words building on the ways in which the readings connect older almanacs to contemporary media. How do you see the functions or design of the almanacs continuing (in a transformed way) today?

Heading into fall break, we will have a change of pace today, meeting at Professor Simpson's house for some book-making activities.

• Bamber Gascoigne, from How to Identify Prints (PWeb Documents)
• Carlo James et al., "Print Techniques" (PWeb Documents)
• Videos of printmaking techniques:
  • On relief printing: Christie's, How did Hokusai create the Great Wave?
  • Eric Meier (Rhode Island School of Design), "From Paper to Copper: The Engraver's Process"
  • The Museum of Modern Art, Pressure + Ink: Intaglio Process
  • University of Houston Digital Media, Stone Lithography
  • "Handprinted" on YouTube: Screen Printing: What Is a Halftone?

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, paste two photos of drawings you have made. Both photos will capture drawings you have made in imitation of automated printing techniques, using paper and a pen or pencil.

For both drawings, depict the same simple object using a pencil or, if you're feeling bolder, a pen. (Drawing a book would be thematically appropriate, but you can choose another object if you want to.) For the first drawing, draw the object using only thin lines, in the style of steel engraving. For the second drawing, use only small, circular dots as in half-tone printing. The quality of the results is unimportant; the point of the assignment is to gain a visceral sense of how printing techniques create images (and to have some creative fun).

Films from the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library at the University of Illinois:

• American Newspapers, 1800-1860: Introduction (2012)
• American Newspapers, 1800-1860: City Papers (2015)
• American Newspapers, 1800-1860: Country Papers (2013)

And from Stanford University's Bill Lane Center for the American West:

• Growth of American Newspapers, 1690-2011 (2011)

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write an entry of at least 200 words about how today's print or online newspapers continue or tranform some aspect of the history of newspapers that you learned about in the films.

• Borsuk, Chapter 3: "The Book as Idea"

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write an entry of at least 200 words planning your own artist's book. (You don't have to make the book itself, so your plan can be as ambitious as you want it to be.) Refer to at least two examples from Borsuk's chapter that inspire your own design, and explain how the form and concept of your book connect to each other. You are welcome to use any kind of visual illustration you want, but illustration is not required.

• "Maturity: Books in the Age of Automation, 1800-1900" from Nicole Howard, The Book: The Life Story of a Technology (PWeb Documents)
• Jacob Abbott, chapters 4 through 17 of The Harper Establishment: How the Story Books Are Made (1855, also in PWeb Documents)

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write your own skeletal outline of the industrial printing process as you understand it from Howard and (especially) Abbott. Come to class ready to ask questions about any part of the process you have trouble understanding.

• Jonathan Sencheyne, "Under Pressure: Reading Material Textuality in the Recovery of Early African American Print Work" (PWeb Documents)
• E. Jennifer Monaghan, "Reading for the Enslaved, Writing for the Free: Reflections on Liberty and Literacy" (PWeb Documents)

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, quote one sentence from each article that you think of as its thesis. (You just need to type the quotation and the page number for each of the two sentences.) For each of the two sentences, come to class prepared to say what you think your chosen sentence captures and what it leaves out of the whole article's analysis.

• "Out of Sorts: Typesetting Meets the Industrial Revolution," from Keith Houston, The Book (PWeb Documents)
• Nicole Howard, "Timeline" from The Book: The Life Story of a Technology (PWeb Documents)
• Encyclopedia Britannica Films, Making Books (1947)
• Vocational Guidance Films, Printing (1947)
• The Telegraph, Birth of a Book: How a Hardback Book is Made
• Gotham Print, How Books Are Made: A Look Inside a 2021 Commercial Print Shop
• Porter Press, How Our Books Are Bound: Behind the Scenes
• Espresso Book Machine

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write at least 50 words each about three elements of twentieth-century printing that you understand in a new way from today's assignments.

• David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery, "The Future of the Book," from An Introduction to Book History (PWeb Documents)
• Latter part of "The Future of Books: Twentieth Century and Beyond" from Nicole Howard, The Book: The Life Story of a Technology (PWeb Documents)

These readings introduce you to visions of the future of the book from about twenty years ago. By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write at least 100 words each about a point from each of the two articles that helps you consider how the future of the book may have changed in the past two decades.

• Alessandro Ludovico, from Post-Digital Print: The Mutation of Publishing Since 1894 (PWeb Documents)
• Coover, Robert, "The End of Books" (also in PWeb Documents)
• Leah Price, "Dead Again" (also in PWeb Documents)

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write an entry that contains three short thoughts, of at least 75 words each, in which you take one specific point from each of today's readings and talk about how you might use that point in your upcoming essay on The Pandemic Generation's Future of the Book. In class today, you will build on these notes to prepare for submitting the assignment next week.

The Pandemic Generation's Future of the Book is due in your classwork document at the end of our normal class time (4:00 p.m.). We will not meet collectively as a class today; instead, in the early part of this week, we will have individual check-in conferences to prepare for the stretch run of the semester.

• Jukka Aalho, “I Wrote a Book with GPT-3 AI in 24 Hours — And Got It Published.” (also in Pweb Documents)
• From Jukka Aalho, Aum Golly: Poems on Humanity by an Artificial Intelligence (Pweb Documents)
• Vauhini Vara, "Ghosts" (Pweb Documents)
• Ted Chiang, "Ted Chiang, ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web" (Pweb Documents)

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write at least 200 words responding to these readings, responding to at least two quotations from the computer-generated poetry or fiction.

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write three prototype ideas for your final assignment, the Transhistorical Project. Try out three separate ideas with at least 50 words of writing for each. We will use class time to share and discuss your ideas.

• Jessica Pressman, "'There’s Nothing Quite Like a Real Book': Stop-Motion Bookishness" (PWeb Documents)
• Going West (short film for the New Zealand Book Council)
• The Joy of Books (short film by Sean Ohlenkamp for Type Books)

By 1:00 a.m. the night before class, in your classwork document, write at least 200 works about some object of "bookishness" you find--not one that Pressman mentions directly. Your object can be in your physical environment or online. In your writing, explain how the object matches or extends Pressman's concept of bookishness.

Last day of class: by 1:00 a.m. the night before class, insert one image in your classwork document that you think shows something that scholars of book history 50 years from now will think was important about our own historical period. In class, you will explain your image for 2-3 minutes as part of our last-day festivities.