ENG 3803

Textual transmission has a long global history, and over time, humans have implemented “text” in a variety of discourses. Each technological advancement of textual transmission has unique conventions and problems that affect human understanding and appreciation of material textual culture. Concerning ourselves with changing textual forms, argues D.F. McKenzie, “allows us to describe not only the technical but the social process of their transmission. In those quite specific ways, it accounts for non-book texts, their physical forms, textual versions, technical transmission, institutional control, their perceived meanings, and social effects” (Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts p. 13).

We will begin by asking these questions:
How have humans communicated with each other throughout history? Speech? Visual Images? Text? What modes and mediums does human communication take? How does text evolve? Really, at the heart of this class is the question: how does text move and change from one text technology to another? What problems and implications arise from such radical influences of technological advancement and societal influences? This course will explore and unpack these questions using hands-on projects to understand the challenges each text technology faces and how it influences human understanding.

We will begin our inquiry into the history of text technologies around 30,000 B.C. with the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave of France. Other text technologies we will explore include; cuneiform tablets, papyrus scrolls, using parchment and vellum, paper making. The era of the printing press in early America is unique in its creation of imagined communities which fueled the separation and subsequent revolution between Britain and America. Finally, we will end our journey with Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and society’s intervening role of his revisions in 19th century America.