The Archeology of Text
SYLLABUS VIEW, English 241.001, Fall 2007, MWF 12:30-1:20, VM 207
Weekly Schedule and Assignments Last edited: 05/10/2008 13:02
(Note: Assigned readings are in online full-text documents, public folder postings, photocopies, and printed texts. Read the syllabus carefully, with an eye for typography and color, to know where assigned readings can be found. Boldface type warns you when the assignment comes from required printed textbooks, an actual DVD (vs. a web video), or in photocopied handouts you should get in the preceding class. A parenthetical underscored message indicates readings that are located on the English 241 public folder, which you can access through your Goucher email account. Hyperlinks to online readings are underscored in blue. Words in italics, unless they are book or periodical titles per MLA style, are general discussion topics, but don't let them keep you from bringing up other issues.)
Week 1 Texts, Archives, and Research Today--The Nature of the Problem
Wednesday, 8/29: Course introduction; syllabus and web-site review; reading assignments in various textual media (original print, photocopy, scanned PDF, digital versions of print in public folder, "born digital" on the Internet); graded work (writing on digital, print and MS labs, independent research project); sharing our interests as researchers. What brings you to this course? What do you hope to learn to do? What textual media do you think you will want to research independently? Before class, please read Jim Barksdale and Francine Berman, "Saving Our Digital Heritage," The Washington Post, 16 May 2007, A15; Bruce Mehlman and Larry Irving, "Bring on the Exaflood!: Broadband Needs a Boost," The Washington Post, 24 May 2007, A31; Lisa Rein, "Hello, Grisham--So Long, Hemingway?: With Shelf Space Prized, Fairfax Libraries Cull Collections," The Washington Post, 2 January 2007, A01; Frank Ahrens, "Death by Wikipedia: The Ken Lay Chronicles," The Washington Post, 9 July 2006, F7. (These readings are short newspaper articles located on the "English 241" Public Folder). What can print collections do with de-accessioned print materials? "LJ Talks to Terry Belanger," Library Journal, 11 October 2005, Available online at: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6265925.html. (Mr. Belanger runs the Rare Book School at University of Virginia.) Guests: Nancy Magnuson and Margaret Guccione.
Friday, 8/31: Hard Choices Dead Ahead!: Logistics, economics, cultural change and modern technology vs. the survival of print archives. What was "microfilm" and how did it affect pre-digital attempts to solve archival storage space problems? Nicholson Baker, "Deadline" (in Writing Material, 9-34); Marlene Manoff, "The Symbolic Meaning of Libraries in a Digital Age," Libraries and the Academy 1:4 (2001) 371-81; Skim these two web pages decribing the foundation of two major microfilming initiatives that have now gone digital: UMI.com (formerly University Microfilms International) and Hill Museum and Manuscript Library. Guests: Nancy Magnuson and Margaret Guccione. (and Bill Leimbach?) [Note: Baker's New Yorker article and book made some amazing charges against libraries which Manoff does not exactly rebut directly. To see a point-by-point answer from the Association of Research Libraries, click here. For the ARL collection of related pages to help their members track and respond to the controversy created by Baker's article and book, click here. Libraries probably have not had so much attention in headlines since the burning of the library of Alexandria.]
Week 2: Research in Digital Texts: Digital Text Construction, History, and Future
Monday 9/3: LABOR DAY HOLIDAY To prepare for this week's classes on digital texts and archives, spend some time recalling and writing about how you first encountered digital words. What hardware and software were you first aware of using? How did it affect your training to read and to write? Did you parents and/or teachers introduce you to this technology of literacy or did you discover it on your own? What digital literacy technologies do you currently use, and how do they affect your reading and writing? Consider both academic and private uses of literacy in your memoir. Because you will have a long holiday weekend to think about this, you will have time to ask your parents and others who were witnesses at the time to help you fill in or check details. Come prepared to help the class develop a picture of how digital literacy has overtaken print and manuscript literacy, and how the three literacies currently co-exist for each of you.
Wednesday 9/5: How are digital documents made and read, from the "standalone word processor" era to the present day? Code, files, software and hardware for digital media. Click here for some sample document codes. Guest: Bill Leimbach [NOTE: From 3:30 to 5:00, Gail McCormick will introduce us to the Special Collections of the Julia Rogers Library (down the stairs to the left of the Circulation Desk and turn right). Please make time for this important event. Once you know where the Special Collections are located, and how researchers can use them, you will be able to take advantage of them with greater confidence for the rest of the semester. If for some important reason you cannot attend this session, please let me know and we will try to arrange a make-up session for you.]
Friday 9/7: How are digital documents stored, retrieved, and archived on networks linked to the Internet? Networks, packet-switching, and the history of the Internet and World-Wide-Web. Spend a little while browsing this online history of the Internet; then read P. Biddle, P. England, M. Peinado, and B. Willman (Microsoft Corporation), available online at "The darknet and the future of content distribution," DRM 2002: 2002 ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management (18 November 2002). Biddle, Peinado, and Willman mention "digital watermarking"--click here for an image that has been coded with a visible "digital watermark" to make it impossible to reuse without identifying its source. What would be the function of an invisible digital watermark? Also, to test your starting bibliographic research skills, try searching for a printed book said to be written by Venerable Bede whose title is Liber scintillarum, published in Rome in 1560, using these three search engines: OLLI's Advanced Keyword Search, WorldCat.org's advanced search, and the University of Karlsruhe Library virtual catalog. Guest: Bill Leimbach
Week 3: Research in Archives of Digital Texts: Digital Text Construction, History, and Future
Monday 9/10: What factors affect the survival of digital
documents, and what must be done to preserve digital information? Joel
Rothenberg, “Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Information” (February 22, 1999
Rev. of 1995 Scientific American article): available in
its most recent revision only online at
http://www.clir.org/PUBS/archives/ensuring.pdf (Try to follow his somewhat
technical description of the "bit stream" in the middle of the article, but the
beginning and end contain the most important information for 241.);
"Warning of Data Ticking Time Bomb," BBC News, 3 July 2007.
Available online at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6265976.stm (Note
how many years have elapsed between Rothenberg's article and the BBC article!)
Also, browse the web site for LOCKSS
(Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe), especially the
"About LOCKSS"
page. This project is an attempt to answer the needs raised by
Rothenberg's article. Vicky Reich, Director of the Stanford University
Library LOCKSS, Program, is a Goucher grad (1975).
Wednesday 9/12: How does online
reading, especially hypertext reading, affect readers' experience of the text? Jay David
Bolter, "The New Dialogue" (in Writing Material, 75-87); Schneider, Ralf. (ralf.schneider@uni-tuebingen.de)
"Hypertext narrative and the reader: a view from cognitive theory."
European Journal of English Studies; Aug2005, Vol. 9 Issue 2, p197-208, 12p.
Available at:
http://sea
Friday 9/14: What challenges do digital surrogates pose for print literature and the future of the book? Sven Birkets, "Into the Electronic Millennium" (from The Gutenberg Elegies [N.Y.: Faber and Faber, 1994], rpt.in Writing Material, 62-74); Stephenson, Wen. "The message is the medium: a reply to Sven Birkerts and 'The Gutenberg Elegies'." Chicago Review 41.n4 (Fall 1995): 116(15). Expanded Academic ASAP. Thomson Gale. Goucher College - Julia Rogers Library. 8 Jan. 2007. Available online from this stable URL: http://find.galegroup.com/itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&docId=A17837719&source=gale&srcprod=EAIM&userGroupName=goucher_main&version=1.0
Week 4: Research in Archives of Digital Texts: Digital Text Archive Construction, History, and Future
Monday 9/17: What makes Google the "librarian" controlling our access to the World-Wide-Web, and what do we pay for our dependency upon it and other search engines whose designs are even more commercially motivated? Everyone should read Stephen E. Arnold, "Relevance and the End of Objective Hits," Online (September-October 2005) 16-21 [photocopied handout] and the following web pages: Google's Version of Its History, Google "Page-Rank" Search Algorithm., Google Book Search., and Google Hot Trends. The following links take you to pages which explain the operations of search portals other than Google: Ask.com; Yahoo. If you are specifically interested in digital text archives, you can find further reading in these examples of Modern Literature Online Surrogate Sites. (Current examples include Rossetti, Blake, and a German Emblem Book aggregation. Please send me URLs for others as you find them!) [Further reading in Batelle's The Search (2005), a Julia Rogers Library book on reserve for 241, is recommended for students specifically interested in digital archiving, searching, and retrieving information: John Battelle, The Search: The Inside Story of How Google and its Rivals Changed Everything. N.Y.: Portfolio, 2005, “The Database of Intentions,” “Who?, what?, where?, why?, when?, and how (much)?,” “Search before Google was born,” “Google.” 338.761 B335s 2005] Two relevant web pages.
Wednesday 9/19: How do digital text archives affect the design and operations of "bricks and mortar" sites like the Julia Rogers Library? ACADIA 1998 International Design Competition for a Library for the Digital Age: http://www.acadia.org/competition-98/winners.html (Winners Page—click on individual designs for explanations of their construction.) Also see the rationale for Medieval MS vs. early print vs. digital media work spaces at: www.acadia.org/competition-98/sites/integrus.com/html/library/org.html, and take a few minutes to explore the digital competition, Project Gutenberg and The University of Virginia's EText Initiative. How would you compare the experience of reading from those online archives of text with reading printed books? Guest: Nancy Magnuson Some relevant web pages re: libraries of the distant past.
Friday 9/21: What is the "past," and what is the "future" of digital archives and digital documents?--The Internet Archive (esp. "The WayBack Machine" search engine). (If you don't know of any sites that have disappeared, try searching The Wayback Machine for a very cool, very gone site called www.concordance.com.) California Digital Library. (a print/digital hybrid--some titles are public access and some are subscriber-based); Two TED talks about digital era image archives and textbooks--"Richard Baraniuk: Goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning" available online at: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/25 (18:45), and "Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo," available online at: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129. (I know it sounds like a huge PR puff, but see if your mandibles don't loosen just a bit.) Other relevant web page URLS.
Saturday 9/22: First written assignment due by noon in my Inbox as a MS-Word or Rich Text Format (.rtf) document attached to an email, or a URL in an email that directs me to some web-writing (using standard academic English and MLA format, of course). Click here for possible topics and specific instructions.
Week 5: Print Texts: Construction, History, and Future (NB: for unfamiliar terms in the print and MS section of the course, before you ask me, try looking it up in this online PDF version of John Carter's classic reference work, ABC for Book Collectors).
Monday 9/24: [National Punctuation Day!] How are hand-press books printed and bound? Over the weekend, go to the Julia Rogers Library circulation desk, get and watch the English 241 reserve copy of The Rare Book School's two-part DVD, The Anatomy of a Book: Part I: Format in the Hand-Press Period and The Making of a Renaissance Book (running time for both, approximately one hour). Before you watch the DVD, using this hyperlinked page, print at least four pages of paper with watermarks and countermarks on them to practice bindery folding and format detection. For an online refresher about identifying format from chain lines and watermark positions, see this online guide from the Japanese Diet Library. Before class, read Richard W. Clement, ORB Online Encyclopedia, Books and Universities, Medieval and Renaissance Book Production, “Printed Books,” available at: http://web.ku.edu/~bookhist/medbook2.html; look at the images on Sanders, "Inking, Paper Registration, and Pulling: Hand Press Printing, c. 1460-1800", and skim the Chronological Table of Printed Book Production (National Diet Library, Japan), and the Göttingen Library site displaying digital images of the 1282 pages from the State and University Library of Lower Saxony vellum copy of The Gutenberg Bible (circa 1454). Don't try to read the whole Gutenberg Bible! The main points relevant to our discussion of early printed books can be absorbed from looking at the typography and page layout of just a few pages, or even one page.
Wednesday 9/26: How do bibliographers describe hand-press books, what kinds of books were first printed, and how did they make the paper on which most of the books were printed? Williams and Abbott, An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies, Chapters 1 & 2 ("Introduction" and "Analytical Bibliography") 1-26. Also, spend half an hour reading and looking at these three web pages and accompanying exercise on typography, the forensic analysis of hand-press printers' type fonts. This is not a lot of "reading," just some intense "looking." Williams and Abbott's discussion of type fonts as evidence (14-15) has no illustrations, but typography is a supremely visual science. Guide to today's discussion.
Friday 9/28: What did print do to the way we read, and how did circulation of print documents leave evidence of their use by readers? How did manuscript punctuation conventions change when printers marked up MS copy for editions? Paul Duguid and John Seely Brown, "The Social Life of Documents"; and Elizabeth Eisenstein, "Some Features of Print Culture"; both in Writing Material, 104-22 and 124-33. David R. Thomas, "Whence the Semicolon?: Thoughts on Sign and Signal in Western Script," in Early English and Norse Studies: Presented to Hugh Smith in Honour of His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Arthur Brown and Peter Foote (London: Methuen, 1963), 191-5. [photocopy] Also, think about the significance of the data in these two tables that summarize printed book production by country and by language in the first century of print--the first era of "imaginary worlds" produced by printers: Incunable Production in the Fifteenth Century (Sanders ex-Rudolph Hirsch and George Painter). Web page for today--talking points from Duguid and Brown, Eisenstein, and Thomas. Web link from Thomas re: standardization of punctuation.
Week 6: Print Archives: Construction, History, and Future (NB: for unfamiliar terms in the print and MS section of the course, see John Carter. ABC for Book Collectors).
Monday 10/1: How were the earliest libraries constructed, and how did the advent of print and serious book collecting reshape libraries? Kenneth M. Setton , “From Medieval to Modern Library,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 104, No. 4, Dedication of Library Hall of the American Philosophical Society, Autumn General Meeting, November, 1959. (Aug. 15, 1960), pp. 371-390. Available online from this stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-049X%2819600815%29104%3A4%3C371%3AFMTML%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z. Spend a little while exploring the Library of Congress Classification System and the Dewey Decimal Classification System, both of which are now in use in the Julia Rogers Library. Guest: Nancy Magnuson?
Wednesday 10/3: When we hold a book in our hands, what are we really holding and how might it relate to other versions of itself? Jonathan Evans (U. Georgia), "Walter F. Oakeshott and the Discovery of the Winchester MS," and Williams and Abbott, An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies, Chapter 3 ("Descriptive Bibliography" 27-40).
Friday 10/5: When we hold a book in our hands, what are we really holding and how might it relate to other versions of itself? Williams and Abbott, An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies, Chapter 4 ("A Text and Its Embodiments," 41-51). Guest: Nancy Magnuson? British Library Web Site for Images of the Malory MS (British Library Additional MS 59678--i.e., that is its accession number and its identifying name in their collection, corresponding to a LOC number or DD number for a copy of a printed edition).
Week 7: Print Text Archival Research Methods (NB: for unfamiliar terms in the print and MS section of the course, see the online PDF version of John Carter. ABC for Book Collectors).
Monday 10/8: How should we analyze the papers from which early printed books were made, and what kinds of evidence do they reveal? The Paper Museum--samples of paper from many nations and for many uses. Alan Stevenson, "Paper as Bibliographic Evidence," The Library 5th Series XVII:3 (September 1962) [photocopied excerpt] 197-204, and "Watermarks Are Twins," Studies in Bibliography 4 (1951-52) 57-91. "Watermarks" is available online at: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/bsuva/sb/ (Use the "Browse by Volume" menu in the left frame and click on "4"--Stevenson's article is the fourth. Why might this digital copy be preferable to a photocopy?) For a quick introduction to the early history of papermaking in Asia, see the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild "Paper" page.
Wednesday 10/10: When we hold a book in our hands, what are we really holding and how might it relate to other versions of itself? We meet at the Rare Book Reading Room in Special Collections to discuss Williams and Abbott, An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies, Chapter 5 ("Textual Criticism" (52-75). (Just skim the examples of bibliographic descriptions at the end--we won't be doing the full-dress version, but they will give you some idea of how much a trained eye can see in a book and how bibliographers communicate with each other about what they hold in their hands.) After discussing what kind of decisions editors make when turning manuscripts into printed editions, we will begin The Hand-Press Book Leaf Laboratory: Introduction. Each of you will be assigned one of the laboratory book leaves. For each leaf, we want to know: what is it?; how should we describe it?; and how do our pages relate to one another? Remember to wash your hands before you arrive and to leave all food and drink behind before entering the outside doors. (Refresh your memory about good behavior with old books by reading this web page.) Pack light--there won't be much elbow room around the table and we will be working with old, fragile documents. Between this class and our return from Mid-Semester Break, work with your book leaf's digital images to extract as much information as they can reveal, and plan what you will try to learn from the leaves, themselves, when you return. Remember to share what you learn with your colleagues by posting your findings on the English 241 Public Folder.
Friday 10/12: MID-SEMESTER BREAK [10/12-14]
Week 8: Print Text Archival Research Methods (NB: for unfamiliar terms in the print and MS section of the course, see John Carter. ABC for Book Collectors).
Monday 10/15: The Hand-Press Book Leaf Laboratory: Sharing Our First Evidence--Bring the results of your research to the Special Collections Seminar Room. Remember to wash your hands before you arrive and to leave all food and drink behind before entering the outside doors. (Refresh your memory about good behavior with old books by reading this web page.) As before, pack light--there won't be much elbow room around the table and we will be working with old, fragile documents. Bring your lab kit (magnifier, light, tape measure).
Wednesday 10/17: The Hand-Press Book Leaf Laboratory: Putting All the Evidence Together. Meet at the Special Collections Seminar Room. Meet at the Special Collections Seminar Room. Remember to wash your hands before you arrive and to leave all food and drink behind before entering the outside doors. Pack light--there won't be much elbow room around the table and we will be working with old, fragile documents. Bring your lab kit (magnifier, light, tape measure).
Friday 10/19: The Hand-Press Book Leaf Laboratory : What do we know? What don't we know? Meet at the Special Collections Seminar Room. How do your pages relate to one another? How do they relate to other copies of this edition, and to other editions of this text, in the libraries of the world? Remember to wash your hands before you arrive and to leave all food and drink behind before entering the outside doors. Pack light--there won't be much elbow room around the table and we will be working with old, fragile documents. Bring your lab kit (magnifier, light, tape measure).
Friday, October 19, 2007, at 3:30, leave for the Walters Art Museum Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, a tour with Will Noel, Curator. (Refresh your memory about good behavior with old books by reading this web page.)
Week 9: Printed Book Laboratory / Manuscript Texts--Construction, Illumination, and Analysis NOTE: Before we begin to study Medieval manuscripts, you should watch this web-based performance of the Christian Mass that reproduces the service for a Danish parish on October 4, 1450. The most prolific producers of Medieval books were monks. Just about everyone in Medieval Europe went to mass routinely as part of the social network which constructed European culture. Think about the way routine repetition with variation in the aural/oral environment would affect people's expectations from books' contents and likely use.
Monday 10/22: How do manuscript books related to early printed books, and how were manuscript books made? Marc Drogin, Medieval Calligraphy: Its History and Technique (N.Y.: Dover, 1980), “Introduction,” “The Scribes,” “The Patron Demon of Calligraphy,” (1-20) and Richard W. Clement, ORB Online Encyclopedia, Books and Universities, Medieval and Renaissance Book Production, “Manuscript Books.” Available at: http://web.ku.edu/~bookhist/medbook1.html
Tuesday 10/23: Second written assignment on the hand-press book lab is due by noon in my Inbox as a MS-Word or Rich Text Format (.rtf) document attached to an email. Click here for specific instructions.
Wednesday 10/24: Why did scribes write, and how did their work relate to early printed books? How did scribes write, and how fast? Johannes Trithemius, From In Praise of Scribes (De laude scriptorum), in Writing Material, pp. 469-75; and Michael Gullick, “How Fast Did Scribes Write? Evidence from Romanesque Manuscripts,” in Making the Medieval Book: Techniques of Production, ed. Linda L. Brownrigg (Los Altos, Cal.: Anderson-Lovelace, 1995) 39-58 [photocopy].
Friday 10/26: What techniques and vocabulary do scholars have for analyzing Medieval scripts? How did Medieval scribes abbreviate and punctuate? Marc Drogin, Medieval Calligraphy: Its History and Technique (N.Y.: Dover, 1980), “The Scripts,” (21-75). Steven Reimer, "Manuscript Studies--Medieval and Early Modern--IV.vi. Paleography: Scribal Abbreviations" and "Punctuation." For help in addition to Drogin's book re: identifying manuscript hands, try Diane Tillotson's paleography exercises using Flash Manuscript fragments side 1 & side 2. Bring your lab kit (magnifier, light, tape measure), and your copy of Drogin.
Week 10: Manuscript Texts--Construction, Illumination, and Analysis / Manuscript Laboratory, Part 1
Monday 10.29: What techniques and vocabulary do scholars have for analyzing bindings? Jennifer M. Sheppard, “Some Twelfth-Century Monastic Bindings and the Question of Localization," in Making the Medieval Book: Techniques of Production, ed. Linda L. Brownrigg (Los Altos, Cal.: Anderson-Lovelace, 1995) 181-98 [photocopy]. Michelle P. Brown, "Elements of Illumination," in Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms, (Malibu, Ca.: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1994) p. 8 [photocopy]. Test your ability to use Brown's vocabulary to describe these images of two extensively illuminated MS leaves. The first manuscript laboratory page assignments will be given out in class. You should get started as soon as possible using the digital images linked to this assignment.
Wednesday 10/31: Manuscript Laboratory, Part 1. Bring laptops to class if you have them, but also, wash your hands before class and don't bring food or drink to this one. Treat the classroom as an "archive." We will be working with leaves from a nineteenth-century manuscript from my collection. We will be discussing the ways in which hand-written documents contain evidence that printed documents do not. Our goal is to describe it, decipher it, and identify it. If you are interested, this manuscript also can be part of your independent research project. It has some relationship with a published author's work, but what is that relationship? Bring your lab kit (magnifier, light, tape measure) (Review Williams and Abbott, An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies, Chapter 4, "A Text and Its Embodiments," for clues about how to interpret this evidence.)
Friday 11/2:
Manuscript
Laboratory, Part 1. What do we
know? What don't we know?
How should this MS be described? Bring your lab kit (magnifier, light,
tape measure)
Week 11: Manuscript Archives--Construction, Organization, and Analysis
Monday 11/5: Hereford Cathedral Chained Library (click on the upper menu for the "Chained Library" web page); three web pages from "600 Years of Cambridge University Library: An Exhibition at the Cambridge University Library, 8 October 2002 to 15 March 2003," "Library Beginnings," "Medieval Library," "Filling the Library"; Mathew "Nosey" Parker and the founding of the Corpus Christi, Cambridge, Parker Library; Students especially interested in early manuscript libraries should see Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400-1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). 274.2 D858s 1992 For this class, we will meet in Special Collections Seminar Room to examine some of the collection's incunabula ("cradle books," pre-1500) to rethink book construction and preservation during the era in which print competed with manuscript book production.
Wednesday 11/7: Manuscript Fragments and Typical Surviving Manuscript Books; Solomon Schechter and the Ginezah fragments; "Biblioklasts" and the production of Medieval MS leaf market, the Otto Ege Collection phenomenon and others (See the conference papers in Session 12 of the 2006 Art Libraries of America Annual Conference at http://www.arlisna.org/news/conferences/2006/proceedings/proceed_index.htm), Christopher de Hamel, Cutting Up Manuscripts for Pleasure and Profit (The 1995 Sol M. Malkan Lecture on Bibliography) (Charlottesville, VA: Book Arts Press, 1995, rpt. March 2006) [photocopy]. Visit this web site and explore at least three instances in which MS leaves were sold on eBay: CHD Center for Håndskriftstudier i Danmark, Dismembered Manuscripts, This is an online project reclaiming digital images of Medieval manuscript leaves that have been sold on eBay and, in most cases, lost to scholarship forever.
Friday 11/9: Parchment Museum Day--Christopher Clarkson, "Rediscovering Parchment: The Nature of the Beast." The Paper Conservator. 16 (1992) 5-16 [photocopy] (Note that only pages 5-7 are text--the rest contain images illustrating parchment manuscript features.) Bill Buford, Heat (N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006) 239-75 & 285-301, and Giovanni Rebora, Culture of the Fork Tr. Albert Sonnenfeld (N.Y.: Columbia UP, 2001) 40-51 [photocopy]. Leaf assignments and introduction to the Manuscript Book Laboratory 2 (for next week, but you can access the digital images now).
Week 12: Manuscript
Book Laboratory 2
Monday 11/12: Manuscript Book Laboratory 2:
Initial exploration of what we have before
us. Meet
at the Special Collections Seminar Room. Remember to wash your hands
before you arrive and to leave all food and drink behind before entering the
outside doors. Pack light--there won't be much elbow room around the table
and we will be working with old, fragile documents. Bring your lab kit
(magnifier, light, tape measure) and your Latin dictionary. Computers
will be available for online searches, but if you have a laptop, you might want
to bring it--we can find space for them outside the reading room. You are invited to
return for further work outside class at any time during Special Collections'
hours of operation (10 to 4 PM M, Tue, Wed., and Fri., plus 1-2 on Thursday). Note that digital images of all
MS leaves are available from the MS Book Lab hyperlink so that you can continue
to work on your leaf when Special Collections is closed, though physical
examination of the leaves, themselves, will be the only way to answer some
questions about construction and content.
Wednesday 11/14: Manuscript Book Laboratory 2: Sharing our first results and questions. Meet at the Special Collections Seminar Room. Remember to wash your hands before you arrive and to leave all food and drink behind before entering the outside doors. Pack light--there won't be much elbow room around the table and we will be working with old, fragile documents.
Friday 11/16: Manuscript Book Laboratory 2: Summarizing our findings--what do we know?; what don't we know? Meet at the Special Collections Seminar Room. Remember to wash your hands before you arrive and to leave all food and drink behind before entering the outside doors. Pack light--there won't be much elbow room around the table and we will be working with old, fragile documents.
Week 13: Individual Research Projects
Monday 11/19: Introduction to Individual Research Projects in Special Collections: James W. Bright Collection, Alberta Burke Collection, etc. Meet at the Special Collections Seminar Room. Remember to wash your hands before you arrive.
Tuesday 11/20: Third written assignment is due in my inbox by noon reflecting upon and analyzing the second manuscript book lab, your experiences as you worked with it, and the text's relationship to its origins and to our era. Click here for specific instructions. If you were to turn in this assignment earlier in the week, it would make my life easier!
Wednesday 11/21 through Sunday 11/25--THANKSGIVING VACATION.
Week 14: Independent Research Projects
Monday 11/26: Research Project Workshop: The class will meet in the Special Collections stacks and Seminar Room to plan and research individual projects on manuscript, print, or digital texts and archives. Studies of volumes from the James Wilson Bright Collection are encouraged, of course, but students should pursue their intellectual curiosities.
Wednesday 11/28: Research Project Workshop: The class will meet in the Special Collections stacks and Seminar Room to research individual projects on manuscript, print, or digital texts and archives.
Friday 11/30: Research Project Workshop: The class will meet in the Special Collections stacks and Seminar Room to research individual projects on manuscript, print, or digital texts and archives.
Week 15: Independent Research Project Reports
Monday 12/3: Independent Research Project Reports: Show us what you have found about the subject of your research so far. Be sure to make available, either online or in a printed handout, a bibliographic description of the subject text and a bibliography of works you consulted while working on it. A completed written version of the report will be due the Monday after the last week of classes.
Wednesday 12/5: LAST CLASS--course evaluation and more Independent Research Project Reports. If you have time, read "The Jewel Game", an excerpt from Rudyard Kipling's Kim. It seems to be about what we are trying to learn to do.
Monday 12/10: Written version of Independent Research Project Report due by 12:00 Noon (either as MS-Word or web page or other format--please negotiate to insure that I can access and read it!).