The 2004 meeting of the Modern Language Association will take place in Philadelphia, 27-30 December. I would like to repeat my suggestion that academic bloggers who will be at the conference get together at some point.
Interested? Let me know.
Please also consider putting a notice on your own blog.
Update: Participants so far
After staying up late, working on this and that, this morning I am going to attempt some cardiovascular exercise. It’s extremely cold, so I’ll eschew running and head down to the fitness room to which we have access, hoping that no one is on the one machine I actually like to use. Goals:
I have not done any of this in months and months, and no matter how uncomfortable this might be, my philosophy is that doing something is better than doing nothing.
Update: Mission accomplished.
Yes, I know those last two are nothing to get excited about, but today is a start.
In response to an emailed question about foundational texts on the history of the book, I wrote the following response, and I would be glad to hear other suggestions readers might have:
I would recommend that you start with Robert Darnton’s “What Is The History of Books?” in his collection of essays entitled The Kiss of Lamourette. (There is a reply to Darnton in the first essay of A Potencie of Life: Books in Society.) If you’re the journal browsing type, take a look at Book History, an annual that has been produced by the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing for the last several years.
As the starting point with foundational texts, go with Elizabeth Eisenstein’s The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, which is an abridgement (accessible, but with the footnotes removed!) of her much longer work, The Printing Press As An Agent of Change. If you have time and/or are a fast reader, go with the longer work.
Appearing earlier than Eisenstein’s work, Marshall McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy was influential for a time, but I have found his work unsatisfying. Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy is a good synthesis of the extant work on a topic tangential to book history proper; the study of orality and literacy is a different field, although there are significant intersections.
D. F. McKenzie’s Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts is an important set of essays arguing for the importance of considering not only the material nature of texts themselves but also the environment in which they are produced, circulated, and received.
Most recently, Adrian Johns’ The Nature of the Book is seen as, in part, a reconsideration of many of Eistenstein’s assertions. Not everyone agrees, however, that he has really successfully refuted what she has to say. A relatively recent issue of American Historical Review has an interchange between the two scholars.
You might also check out The Book History Reader (ed. by Finkelstein and McCleery) and A Dictionary of Book History by John Feather.
The field has tended to take slightly different directions depending on the area of specialization, but the above are pretty important texts. If you were to tell me that 19th-century America is what you’re most interested in, for example, I might make a different (or additional) set of recommendations.
So the blog is now called “Thanks for not being a Zombie,” and my name is no longer so prominently displayed. Please, dear reader, change your links so they say something like “Thanks…Zombie,” instead of my name. I’m not going to be overly concerned about concealing who I am, but I’m going to be harder to google. I have an inclination to talk about some things that, while not scandalous, are perhaps a bit impolite.
It remains to be seen if I will act upon those inclinations. Don’t worry: if I know you, the chances are very slim that I plan to write about you.
We’re running the latest version of MovableType, now. If you run into any problems, please let me know.
