• ENGL 693 Special Topics-Summer Session A
    From Type to Bits, a Media History of American Literature
    Professor Sandy Baldwin, M-F 1330-1445, STANS 336

“Our writing tools write our thoughts” – Nietzsche

“I was the first person in the world to apply the typemachine to literature.” – Twain

An introduction to media history, focused on implications – for literary studies and methodology, and for the institution of “the humanities” – of historical shifts in technical media. The course posits the material and technical conditions of writing as the key to the imaginary effects they produce in fiction and theory. The focus is on the last century of American literature and its theory, technically underwritten by the shift from movable type technology to digital bits. The material studied will include the emergence of the author from the printing press, the alienation of the author by voice recording and transmitting technologies, and the death of the author in the time of automated data processing machinery. Readings in the history of the typewriter, linotype, phonograph, film, digital text, etc., as well as texts by Kittler, McGann, Gitelman, and others. Case studies from Franklin, Melville, Twain, Dickinson, Stein, Olson, Pynchon, Gibson, and others. Students will develop projects articulating literary texts and theory, on the one hand, with technical and archival exploration of media technologies. Projects will include an in-class presentation and a 10 page conference-style essay.

Texts:

Case Studies from Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain

Friedrich Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800-1900 and Literature, Media, Information Systems

N. Katherine Hayles, Writing Machines

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

Additional critical / theoretical readings from Patricia Crain, Michel Foucault, Lisa Gitelman, Jerome McGann, Marshall McLuhan

  • English 693 Special Topics-Summer Session B
    Shots and Cuts:
    Professor Anna Elfenbein

Cinematography, Film Editing, and Movie Meaning

Auteur theory has generally obscured the vital contributions of cinematographers and editors to film art. In practice, viewers frequently know the names of directors/auteurs and their signature films. However, seldom do they recall the names of cinematographers and almost never the names of film editors who made it possible for these auteurs/directors to realize the visions inspired by screen-writers.

“Shots and Cuts” aims to make the invisible visible by examining the evolving techniques and indelible marks of cinematography and film editing on some of our best-known, most influential, and best-loved films, from 1 or 2-shot/cut silents such as The Kiss (1896) to 3,000-cut futuristic fantasies such as The Matrix (1999)—and from the iridescent black and white of films such as F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise (1927) to the vibrant color of films such as David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) and Sam Mendes’s American Beauty (1999).

Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell’s discussion of cinematography and of film editing in Film Art: An Introduction (2004) will serve as a point of departure for our “reading” and responding to the designs of the movies we screen. (I am considering the possibility of using at least some of the movies discussed by Professor John Lamb in his graduate seminar this semester on film genres. However, I will invite suggestions for movies to be included in “Shots and Cuts” from prospective participants in the course.)

Requirements:

  • reading of course texts (handouts);
  • viewing of films selected for the course, including film documentaries on film editing and cinematography such as the award-winning Visions of Light (1992)
  • reporting on the contribution of editing or cinematography to one of the films on the syllabus;
  • writing a formal essay of 10-20 pages that follows up on the report and that incorporates suggestions made during the course Q&A after the report (The formal essay should be suitable for presentation at a film-studies conference or at our departmental Graduate Colloquium.)