91¶ÌÊÓƵ

skip to content

Literature and the Media – Beginnings

Syllabus

 

This reading schedule (as well as the playful section titles) is meant to be suggestive, not prescriptive, chronological, or all-encompassing.

Take a plunge when you sign up for your reports/seminar facilitation, and please clarify the focus of your presentation with me in advance. I will then also direct you (after you have done your own search) to additional specific sources, if necessary.

All essay materials listed below are available on ereserve, online, or easily retrievable from the 91¶ÌÊÓƵ's Stewart Library databases.

 
Week 1–3

General Introduction — Literature and the Modern Media Ecology
The Pencil of Nature — Writings by Hand and Writing with the Sun

  • , II
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables (chap. I - XIII)
  • Jennifer Green-Lewis, "Fiction's Photographers and Their Works: Villains Outside the Frame," Framing the Victorians, 65-94
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, Seven Gables (chap. XIV-XXI)
  • "Daguerreotypy and Other Technologies," Norton, 293-313
  • Alan Trachtenberg, "Seeing and Believing: Hawthorne's Reflections on the Daguerreotype in The House of the Seven Gables," Norton 418-438
  • Seven Gables _________________________________ (presentation)
*** Please note: no class Labor Day, 7 September (Week 3) ***
Week 4–5

Gender and Information Processing I — Telegraphy, Class, and Female Power

  • Henry James, In the Cage
  • John Carlos Rowe, "Gender, Sexuality and Work in In the Cage," in Norton, 483-502
  • Hayles, N. Katherine, "The Dream of Information. Escape and Constraint . . . ," My Mother was a Computer. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 62-71.
  • In the Cage I _________________________________
  • In the Cage II ________________________________
Week 5–7

Sound and Silence — Early Interactions between Literature Print and Phonography (or, Gender again)

  • John M. Picker, "Introduction: The Tramp of a Fly's Footstep," Victorian Soundscapes. OUP, 2003: 3-11
  • ,
  • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, — "The Voice of Science"
  • Jean-Marie Guyau, "Memory and Phonograph"
  • Doyle/Writers and sound recording _________________________________
  • George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion (1913), or alternative text TBA
  • Pygmalion ____________________________________
Week 7–8

Machined Writing (I) — From Manuscript to Typescript

  • , ,
  • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
  • Martin Heidegger, on The Hand and the Typewriter (from Parmenides, 1942/43)
  • Writers and the Typewriter _________________________________
Week 9–10

Vampires and Information Culture — Dracula

  • Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)
  • Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, "Undead Networks: Information Processing and Media Boundary Conflicts in Dracula," Literature and Science, Ed. Donald Bruce and Anthony Purdy. Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi, 1994. 107-129
  • Jennifer Wicke, ELH 59 (1992): 467-93
  • Dracula (I) _________________________________
  • Dracula (II) ________________________________
Week 11–12

American Literary Naturalism and the Modern Media Ecology

Frank Norris's McTeague (II) - Agency and Angst: Mangled Hands and Machined Writing

  • Frank Norris, McTeague (ctd.)
  • Michael Fried, "Stephen Crane's Upturned Faces," Realism, Writing, Disfiguration—On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1987: pp. 93-121.
  • McTeague _________________________________
Week 13

Machined Writing (II) — Identity, Gender, Power)

  • J. M. Barrie, The Twelve-Pound Look
  • Dorothy West, "The Typewriter"
  • D. H. Lawrence, selected essays from Phoenix II
Week 14–15

The Poetics and Politics of (European) Media Modernism

  • Italian Futurism, , F-Technopoetics & Beyond
  • Guillaume Apollinaire, "The New Spirit and the Poets," Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire. Ed. and trans. Roger Shattuck. New York: New Directions, 1971: 227-237
  • Guillaume Apollinaire, "Lettre-Ocean"
  • Italian Futurism _________________________________
  • Modernist Media Poetics _________________________
*** Essay hard copy due date: Mo, 30 Nov 2009 ***
Please consult the Editing Checklist in the Toolbox for essential pointers regarding your essay.
Week 15

Artificial Summary & Conclusion

  • , ,
  • Student End-of-the Semester Project Thumbnails

Concluding Note

 

The only dumb question is the one you don't ask. My door is always open, and if it is not open, please knock; I will answer if I am there. Please don't hesitate to stop by.

Let's Connect!


mwutz@weber.eduPhone  801-626-7011
Skype  michaelwutz007

LebenslaufCurriculum Vitae
Weber – The Contemporary West

Mailing Address

 

Michael Wutz, Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor
Editor, Weber - The Contemporary West
Department of English, 1404 University Circle
91¶ÌÊÓƵ
Ogden, UT 84404-1404 USA