Using this Schedule
Accessing Readings
The majority of our readings will be available online or through a digital course packet in Leganto. The first time you wish to access items from Leganto you will need to log in through Blackboard (the only time we’ll use it this semester), but thereafter the direct links in the schedule should work. If you switch to a new computer or device you may need to log in through Blackboard once.
Weekly Structure
With a few marked exceptions, the readings on the schedule below should be prepared for the first class of their respective week, which is generally a Monday. This is a studio-based course, and most weeks will be structured like so:
Mondays: discussion of readings Wednesdays: applied instruction in a particular book technology Thursdays: work in studio
This pace will vary a bit as the semester progresses, with no independent studio time in the early weeks of the semester, when you will not yet have a project underway, and with both Wednesday and Thursday being devoted to studio time as final project deadlines approach.
Studio Class Sessions
Our studio class sessions are intended to give you time to experiment with the book technologies introduced throughout the semester and to make substantive progress toward your final project. Studio classes are not optional. During studio classes—and particularly during the second half of the semester when projects are well underway—students will occasionally be asked to share what they are working on with the class for discussion and comment.
Schedule
Week 1 ❧ September 4 & 5 ❧ Introductions
Prep:
- Ken Liu, “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” (2012)
- Josephine Livingston, “What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?” (2018)
- Leah Price, “Introduction” and “Reading Over Shoulders” from What We Talk About When We Talk About Books (2019)
- Browse Kit Davey’s Instagram
Week 2 ❧ September 9, 11, 12 ❧ What Is a Book?
Prep:
- Amaranth Borsuk, The Book (2018)
Thursday, 9/12: Visit to NU Archives
Week 3 ❧ September 16, 18, 19 ❧ Print I
Prep:
- (Watch) Stephen Fry, The Machine That Made Us (2008) Note: This video is about 1 hour long; plan accordingly!
- A.C., “Well Pressed” (2014)
- Lindsay Lynch, “How I Came to Love the En Space” (2016)
- Glen Fleishman, “How Letterpress Printing Came Back from the Dead” (2017)
- Stuart Crawford, “A Design Guide to the Letterpress Printing Process” (2019)
No Class Thursday, 9/19 ❧ Professor Cordell Away
Week 4 ❧ September 23, 25, 26 ❧ Print II
Prep:
- Ellen Lupton, “Letter” and “Text” from Thinking With Type (2010)
- Steven Heller, “Brooklyn In Your (Type)Face” (2015)
- Choose a font to research from the Font Review Journal, Typographica’s Favorite Typefaces of 2017, or the Kern Your Enthusiasm series. Be ready to discuss it in class.
Book Reports
- 9/26 Levi Kaplan
Week 5 ❧ September 30, October 2, 3 ❧ Zines
Guest Lecturers from NU Libraries
Prep:
- Pagan Kennedy, “Prologue,” “Back to Pagan,” “Pagan’s Discovered to be Seventh Partridge,” and “Epilogue” from ‘Zine (1995)
- Zine Librarians Code of Ethics (2015)
- Jenna Wortham, “Why the Internet Didn’t Kill Zines” (2017)
- Erin Dorney, “6 Styles of Erasure Poetry”
- (Browse) Traces
Book Reports
- 10/2 Ben Centracchio
- 10/3 Alice Schaumann
Friday, 10/4 ❧ Book Proposals Due!
Week 6 ❧ October 7, 9, 10 ❧ Binding
Prep:
- Charles W. Chesnutt, “Baxter’s Procustes” (1904)
- Zachary Petit, “Letterpress Goes for a Hike: The Printed Walk” (2016)
- Beth Driscoll and Claire Squires, “‘Oh Look, a Ferry’; or the Smell of Printed Books” (2018)
- Ricardo Dantas, “How to Design an Awarded Letterpress Printed Book” (2019)
Book Reports
- 10/7 Lauren Moy
- 10/9 Elaina Murphy
- 10/10 Stephanie Krueger
No class October 14 ❧ Indigenous Peoples Day
Week 7 ❧ October 16 & 17 ❧ Book Alterities
- Ulises Carrión, “The New Art of Making Books” (1975)
- Christian Bök, “The Xenotext Works (2011) & Joshua Schuster, “On Reading Christian Bök’s ‘The Xenotext: Book 1’ Ten Thousand Years Later” (2016)
- Lisa Vollrath, “A Crash Course On Altered Books” (2015)
- Craig Mod, “The ‘Future Book’ is Here, but It’s Not What We Expected” (2018)
- Merve Emre, “This Library Has New Books by Major Authors, but They Can’t Be Read Until 2114”
- (browse) Tom Phillips, A Humument
Book Reports
- 10/16 Gwendolyn McManus
- 10/17 Erica Yee
Wednesday, 10/16 ❧ Visit to NU Archives**
Week 8 ❧ October 21, 23, 24 ❧ E-lit I
- Ferris Jabr, “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens” (2013)
- Paul La Farge, “The Deep Space of Digital Reading” (2016)
- Jon Bois, “What Football Will Look Like in the Future” (2017)
Book Reports
- 10/21 Lia DeCoursey
- 10/23 Alex Ernst
Week 9 ❧ October 28, 30, 31 ❧ E-lit II
- bpNichol, “First Screening” (1984)
- read about “Agrippa” (1992) at “The Agrippa Files”
- Amaranth Borsuk, Jesper Juul, and Nick Montfort, “The Deletionist” (2013)
- J. R. Carpenter, “etheric ocean” (2014)
- Porpentine, With Those We Love Alive
- Browse the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 2 and Volume 3 and choose one work you would like to share with the class.
- Leonardo Flores, “Third Generation Electronic Literature” (2019)
Book Reports
- 10/28 Boutayna Chokrane
- 10/30 Colin Byrnes
- 10/31 Larissa Morikawa
Friday, 11/1 ❧ Book Prototypes Due!
Week 10 ❧ November 4, 6, 7 ❧ Fabrication I: 3D Printing
- Jentery Sayers, Devon Elliott, Kari Kraus, Bethany Nowviskie, and William J. Turkel, “Between Bits and Atoms: Physical Computing and Desktop Fabrication in the Humanities” from A New Companion to Digital Humanities (2015)
- Susan Garfinkel, “Dialogic Objects in the Age of 3-D Printing: The Case of the Lincoln Life Mask” (2017)
- Kendra Pierre-Louis, “3D printing is tackling what may be its biggest challenge yet: the humble book” (2017)
- Browse the following project snapshots from Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (2017):
- Helen J. Burgess, “MashBOT”
- Garnet Hertz, “Made: Technology on Affluent Leisure Time”
- Allison Burtch and Eric Rosenthal, “Mic Jammer”
- Nina Belojevic, “Glitch Console”
- Aaron Tucker, Jordan Scott, Tiffany Cheung, and Namir Ahmed, “Loss Sets”
- Anne Balsamo, Dale MacDonald, and Jon Winet, “AIDS Quilt Touch: Virtual Quilt Browser”
- Wendy Hsu, Steven Kemper, Josef Cameron Taylor, Linda Wei, and Jacob Alden Sargent, “Moveable Party”
- Kim A. Brillante Knight, “Fashioning Circuits, 2011–Present”
- Carl Disalvo, Tom Jenkins, Jong Won (Karl) Kim, Catherine Meschia, and Craig Durkin, “Designs for Foraging: Fruit Are Heavy, 2015–16”
Book Reports
- 11/4 Anson Huang
- 11/6 Matthew Cook
- 11/7 Madeline Hulse
Wednesday, 11/4 ❧ Visit to the Snell Library 3-D Printing Studio
No class November 11 ❧ Veterans’ Day
Week 11 ❧ November 13 & 14 ❧ Fabrication II: Paper Circuits
- Charity Hancock, Clifford Hichar, Carlea Holl-Jensen, Kari Kraus, Cameron Mozafari, and Kathryn Skutlin, “Bibliocircuitry and the Design of the Alien Everyday” (2013)
- Gabby Resch, Dan Southwick, Isaac Record, and Matt Ratto, “Thinking as Handwork: Critical Making with Humanistic Concerns” (2017)
Book Reports
- 11/14 Olivia Taylor
Week 12 ❧ November 18, 20, 21 ❧ Open
Studio Time
Book Report
- 11/18 Jade Fiorilla
Week 13 ❧ November 25 ❧ Open
Studio Time
No class November 27-29 ❧ Thanksgiving
Monday, 12/2 ❧ Final Projects Due!
Week 14 ❧ December 2 & 4 ❧ Final Exercises
Final project presentations
Monday, December 2
- Anson
- Erica
- Lauren
- Jade
- Olivia
- Ben/Matt
- Alice
- Colin
Wednesday, December 4
- Boutayna
- Stephanie
- Gwen
- Alex
- Levi
- Maddy Van
- Larissa
- Elaina