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Textual Machinery and Rhetorical Agency
Textual Machinery and Rhetorical Agency
Contact
Prof. Krista Kennedy
Course Description
Technologies of writing and reading are ubiquitous to the point of invisibility in our
daily lives. As we go about mundane communicative tasks, we seldom pause to consider
our essential tools: styluses, the alphabet, handwriting, paper, printing, screens, and
pixels. These technologies have immense rhetorical consequences that influence the
formation of knowledge, power, and community identities. In this course, we will ex-
plore intersections of rhetorical agency and the material aspects of textual production.
We’ll begin at the beginning and work our way toward the digital age, using the follow-
ing questions to focus our inquiry:
• How have humans historically created and refined technologies to meet communica-
tive needs?
• How do technologies influence the form, content, and distribution of human writ-
ing?
• Can technologies (particularly communicative technologies) possess agency?
• How do publishing technologies shape the formation of communities and power?
• How have we rhetorically constructed narratives of our complex interactions with
communicative technologies?
Meeting Spaces, Physical and Digital
HBC 020, which needs no introduction, is our default meeting space.
We will also meet in the Antje Bultmann Lemke Room, located on the 6th floor of Byrd
Library in the Special Collections Research Center. See the schedule for dates.
Our course website is located at http://www.kristakennedy.net/ccr633/.
Texts
Required: (Prices listed are for new books via Amazon.)
• Brooke, C.G. (2009). Lingua fracta: Toward a rhetoric of new media. Cresskill,
N.J.: Hampton Press. $24.95.
• Gitelman, L. (2000). Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines. Stanford: Stanford
University Press. $26.95.
• Hayles, N.K. (2002). Writing machines. Cambridge: MIT Press. $14.05
• Lanham, R.A. (1995). The electronic word: Democracy, technology, and the arts.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. $30.00
• Schmandt-Besserat, D. (1996). How writing came about. Austin, University of
Texas Press. $17.37 ***Note that this is the first abridged edition: ISBN
0292777043.***
Recommended:
• Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread
of nationalism. Verso.
• Baron, D. (2009). A better pencil: Readers, writers, and the digital revolution. New
York: Oxford University Press.
• Duncombe, S. (2008). Notes from the underground: Zines and the politics of alter-
native culture. Microcosm Publishing.
• Eisenstein, E. (1979). The printing press as an agent of change. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
• McMillian, J. (2011, available for pre-order as of January). Smoking typewriters:
The sixties underground press and the rise of alternative media in America. New
York: Oxford University Press.
• Morley, D. & Worpole, K. (2009). The republic of letters: Working class writing and
local publishing. Philadelphia: New City Community Press.
• Smith, M.R. & Marx, L. (Ed.), (1994). Does technology drive history? Cambridge:
MIT Press.
Major Assignments
Blogging (15%): You will consider and discuss the weekly topics on our course blog.
This is an open-ended assignment: you may focus on any aspect of the week’s readings
that interests you, bores you, disturbs you, or sends you looking for more stuff. It
should conclude with at least three potential questions for discussion. There are many
Expectations
As with all graduate-level courses, you’re expected to show up, be collegial, and contrib-
ute consistently in an engaged and original fashion. You’re also expected to meet dead-
lines unless an emergency arises. These simple tenets will take you a long way in the
field.
I’m happy to meet with you, whether before or after class, during office hours, by ap-
pointment, or online. If I don’t hear from you, then I will assume that you’re doing just
fine.
• Baron, D. (2009). Writing it down. In A better pencil: Readers, writers, and the
digital revolution. New York: Oxford UP. 3-18.
• Kline, S.J. (1985). What is technology? In Philosophy of technology: The technologi-
cal condition. Eds. Scharff, R.C. & Dusek, V. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 210-212.
• Campbell, K.K. (2005). Agency: promiscuous and protean. Communication and
Critical/Cultural Studies, 2.1, 1-19.
March 1: Handwriting
• Thornton, T.P. (1998). Handwriting in America. New Haven: Yale UP. (ix-xiv, 3-41,
143-175.)
• Douglass, F. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” (ex-
cerpts)
• Baron, D. (2009). Thoreau’s pencil. In A better pencil: Readers, writers, and the
digital revolution. (pp. 33-48.) New York: Oxford UP.
Module 4: Digitalities