Syllabus

See ‘getting to the readings‘ for more information on how to access the readings.

Week 1: 7/2 – 7/6 Week 2: 7/9 – 7/13 Week 3: 7/16 – 7/20
Week 4: 7/23 – 7/27 Week 5: 7/30 – 8/3 Week 6: 8/6 – 8/10

Week 1

Monday, July 2: 

Introduction; What is History of Information, and Why Examine It?

Note: no reading is required in advance of this class.

Slides


Wednesday, July 4: No Class
Independence Day

Friday, July 6
Technological Determinism; Consequences; Alternatives

Slides

Required reading

Additional reading


Week 2

Monday, July 9
Writing Systems and its cultural effects

* Reading Response #1 due before class *

Slides

Required reading

  • McLuhan, Marshall.  1962. “The Galaxy Reconfigured or the Plight of Mass Man in an Individualist Society,” pp 265-279 in The Gutenberg Galaxy: the making of typographic man. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto press. (page 102 in reader)
  • Marshack, Alexander. 1999. “The Art and Symbols of Ice-Age Man,” in David Crowley, ed. Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. Allyn & Bacon. Pp. 5-14 (page 56 in reader)

 

Wednesday, July 11
Second cluster on Writing/ Literacy

Slides

Required reading

Additional material

 

Friday, July 13
Manuscript Culture, Archives, and the social implications of organized knowledge

Slides

Required reading

  • Plato. 1973/360 bce. Phaedrus & the Seventh & Eighth Letters. W. Hamilton, trans. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Read: “Prelude,” pp 21-26, and then “The inferiority of the written to the spoken word” & “Recapitulation and conclusion,” pp. 95-103.
  • Eisenstein, Elizabeth. 1983. “Some Features of Print Culture,” pp 42-91 in Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Week 3

Monday, July 16
Reference books and the organization of knowledge


Slides

Required reading

  • Alexander, C. 1965. A City is not a Tree.
  • McArthur, Tom. Worlds of Reference. 1986. Ch 12-15, pp. 91-133 in Worlds of Reference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wednesday, July 18
The scientific revolution and emergence of the public sphere

Slides

Required reading

 

Friday, July 20
ONLINE MIDTERM Exam posted to bspace and available at 1pm.

Lecture: The global and local articulations of Information


Week 4

Monday, July 23
History of Journalism

Slides

Required reading

  • Schudson, Michael. 2003. “Where News Came From: The History of Journalism,” Ch. 4 in The Sociology of News, Norton. Pp. 64-89.

Wednesday, July 25
Politics and propaganda

Slides

Required reading

  • Marlin, Randall, 2002. “History of Propaganda,” pp. 62-94 in Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion, Toronto: Broadview Press.
  • Watch the first 10-minute segment of “Divide and Conquer,” one of the “Why We Fight” films that Frank Capra made for the Office of War Information in WWII. (If you want more, there are the other segments on this page.) Watch this brief video on the background of these films.
  • Watch the first 7-10 minutes of Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will,” and browse the rest to get the flavor of the rallies — it’s pretty repetitive.

Friday, July 27
Advertising & Photography: technologies of the image

Slides

Required reading

  • John Berger, Ways of Seeing
  • Newhall, Beaumont. 1964. “Prints from Paper,” “Portraits for the Million,” and “The Faithful Witness,”  pp. 31-58, 67-82 in The History of Photography, From 1839 to the Present Day. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Additional material

  • Fradkin, Philip L. 2005. “The Culture of Disasters” pp 263-288 in The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906. University of California Press: Berkeley.

Week 5

Monday, July 30

Narrowcast: telegraph & telephone

Slides

Required reading

  • Fischer, Claude S. 1992. Chapter 2 & Chapter 3 “The Telephone in America.” The Social History of the Telephone to 1940. University of California Press. Berkeley.  pp 33-86

Wednesday, August 1

Broadcast

Slides

Required reading

  • Czitrom, Daniel J. 1982. “The Ethereal Hearth: American Radio from Wireless through Broadcasting, 1892-1940” in Media and the American Mind. University of North Carolina Press. Pp. 60-88.


Friday, August 3
New Media

Readings TBA


Week 6

Monday, August 6
Advent of the computer

Slides

Required reading

  • Campbell-Kelly, Martin & William Aspray.  1996. “‘Babbage’s Dream Comes True,”  (pp. 53-104) in Martin Campbell-Kelly & William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine.  New York: Basic Books.
  • Menabrea, L.F. 1842. Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage, trans. Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace.
[read the final paragraph before the “Notes by the translator. It begins “Now, admitting that such an engine …” and ends “… such an undertaking.”]
  • Berners-Lee, Tim. 2000. Chapters 1-3, pp. 1-34 in Weaving the Web. New York City: HarperCollins.

Additional material

Wednesday, August 8
Advent of the computer, continued

Slides

Recommended readings

  • Web science: an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the web. Hendler et al. (2008) (available through Library proxy)
  • Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality. Tim Berners-Lee (2010).

Friday, August 10
In-class FINAL Exam (starts promptly at 10:10)