10. Academic Appointments
• American University
• University of Michigan
• Alice Freeman Palmer Prof. of History
• Emeritus
• LOC Consultant, History of the Book
• Visiting Prof., Wolfson College, Oxford
Thursday, February 17, 2011
11. Humanities Fellowship
Trifecta
• Guggenheim
• National Endowment for the Humanities
• Rockefeller
Thursday, February 17, 2011
13. When ideas are detached from the media
used to transmit them, they are also cut
off from the historical circumstances that
shape them, and it becomes difficult to
perceive the changing context within
which they must be viewed. (24)
Thursday, February 17, 2011
14. It is one thing to describe how methods of book
production changed after the mid-15c or estimate rates
of increased output. It is another thing to decide how
access to a greater abundance or variety of written
records affected ways of learning, thinking, and
perceiving among literate elites. It is another to decide
how laws, languages, or mental constructs were affected
by more uniform texts. (9)
Thursday, February 17, 2011
15. Aspects of Print Culture
• dissemination
• standardization
• reorganization
• data collection
• preservation
• amplification/reinforcement
Thursday, February 17, 2011
17. Renaissance
Enlightenment
Thursday, February 17, 2011
18. Kate:
Eisenstein’s particular attention to rhetorical context as
well as her explicit methodological and
historiographical considerations simply made me happy
—I can’t help but love writers who are so meticulously
upfront in naming their research practices.
...
Eisenstein’s insistence on locating book culture only in
specific rhetorical context in specific regional and
historical settings seems to be making a case against the
possibility of technological determinism (which she also
blatantly refutes, too). Does this methodological and
historiographical choice always dismantle the
technological determinism argument?
Thursday, February 17, 2011
19. Evolution
v
Revolution
Thursday, February 17, 2011
20. Rachel:
Eisenstein presents many ideas that seem to be meant
as a starting point for discussion rather than answers.
She presents ideas that push the ‘revolution’ and the
‘evolutionary’ theories that she lays out as a dichotomy
in the first chapter. How do we get past this in reading
such work? Is she attempting to make a point for the
agency of the press, something beyond for call for
attention to it from historians?
Thursday, February 17, 2011
22. • Travel time
• Latin v Vernacular texts
• Handwriting workbooks
• Speed of reproduction
• Availability of copies
• Individual learning (66, 72)
Thursday, February 17, 2011
23. LaToya:
One assumption that I wish was challenged is this idea
that “typographical fixity is the prerequisite for the
rapid advancement of learning” (113). This statement
seems to assume that 1) typographical fixity is a
requirement for learning, 2) it somehow increases the
rate of learning, 3) that there is one universal concept
or understanding of learning, which is Western in
nature. I do not agree with any of these assumptions
across the board. I think it would have been more
accurate to say that in the case of the population she
has used in her study this was the case.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
24. Kate:
How do our contemporary academic publishing practices and
interactions match up (or not) with post-printing press features?
What are some of the benefits and losses involved with
communication exchanges regarding revisions through email?
Thursday, February 17, 2011
26. Technical Texts
and
Standardization
Thursday, February 17, 2011
27. rise of modern science
• Maps
• Charts
• Tables
• Instructional manuals
• Textbooks
Thursday, February 17, 2011
28. • improved consistency
• swift corrections
• taxonomy
• increasing popularity of alphabetization
• other aspects/implications of ordering
Thursday, February 17, 2011
29. Print conventions for
readerly efficiency
• Title page
• Table of contents
• Footnotes
• Cross references
• Page numbers
• Section breaks
Thursday, February 17, 2011
30. Tim:
But, as I look deeper, I’m more interested in noting how the more
things change, the more they stay the same. Just as Walter Ong
reminds us that Trithemius’s critique of books was the same as
Plato’s was for writing and seems so similar to many of those
critiques of we hear of texting and twitter, I was struck by
moments in Eisenstein’s book where we see the rhetorical
constraints placed on technology by its human use.running
headers, etc.) and scribes follow suit.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
31. We saw it in those Gutenberg Bible leaves. The printers had to
mimic what was known. In other words, in order to gain purchase
as a legitimate technology, enterprising printers had to subscribe to
the visual rhetoric and stylistic conventions of scribal manuscripts.
They had to live up to the current hegemonic understanding of
quality. Soon, though, scribal culture was mimicking printed
conventions. As the technology gains purchase, printers begin to
maximize its reader-friendly possibilities (Table of Contents,
running headers, etc.) and scribes follow suit.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
32. and also for publicity,
right up front
• firm names & emblems
• shop addresses
Thursday, February 17, 2011
34. Tim:
At the same time, though, standardization and replicability helped
to reinstate all the worst aspects of the Enlightenment project.
Such standardization allowed Jefferson to pass out many many
many copies of his racist thought on blacks in his Virginia Papers. It
allowed maps to become standardized in a Eurocentric lens. It
allowed encyclopedias like the one Krista is studying to
taxonomize knowledge from all over the globe according to a
European mindset. Just as this technology democratized for some,
it tightened the grips of the process of Othering. It made it more
efficient, widespread, seemingly scientific.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
35. Print shop as
cultural center
Thursday, February 17, 2011
36. Print shop as center of
cultural production
Thursday, February 17, 2011
38. Kate:
How does agency function in the relationships between
writer and printer in the 17th c., as described by
Eisenstein? How does agency function in contemporary
relationships between writers and publishers? Which is
better?
Thursday, February 17, 2011
41. • copy editors
• correctors
• illustrators
• print dealers
• indexers
• misc. editorial workers
• delivery men
• metal workers
• punch cutters
Thursday, February 17, 2011
42. Rachel:
What other technologies act to reorder occupations
and bring about new cross-scholarly works? It seems
that the printing press, and now the internet, are still
the most prominent form for this sort of sharing of
knowledge? They surpass the university in my opinion,
as the university is somewhat closed within its schools
as compared to a library or online journals. It rings
true to me that this kind of cross-scholarly work is
essential to new ideas as the author mentions, but also
a potential check-and-balance for ourselves as we strive
for progress, and a key to the arts in the postmodern
world.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
46. Ben:
What can the history of the printing press tell us about the
relationship of our current technologies to the creation of
knowledge? If the printing of stable editions of books created the
means for careful revision, what does the internet—with its
endless possibilities for revision and creation—do to the creation
and stability of knowledge? Have we lost typographical fixity? What
have we gained without it?
Thursday, February 17, 2011
