Schedule for English 25 (S 2023)
Literature and the Information, Media, & Communication Revolutions
Class 1 (M., Apr. 3)
Class 2 (W., Apr. 5)
Class 3 (F., Apr. 7)
Week 2
Class 4 (M., Apr. 10)
Class 5 (W., Apr. 12)
Class 6 (F., Apr. 14)
Week 3
Class 7 (M., Apr. 17)
Class 8 (W., April 19)
Class 9 (F., Apr. 21)
Class 10 (M., Apr. 24)
Class 11 (W., Apr. 26)
Class 12 (F., Apr. 28)
Week 5
Class 13 (M., May 1)
Class 14 (W., May 3)
Class 15 (F., May 5)
Week 6
Exam (M., May 8)
Class 16 (W., May 10)
Class 17 (F., May 12)
Class 18 (M., May 15)
Class 19 (W., May 17)
Class 20 (F., May 19)
Week 8
Class 21 (M., May 22)
Class 22 (W., May 24)
Class 23 (F., May 26)
Week 9
Holiday (M., May 29)
Class 24 (W., May 31)
No Class (F., June 2)
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There are two required print books that must be purchased (see info). All other readings are from online sources. (See A Note About Access to Reading Materials For This Course and also Guide to Downloading and Organizing Online Readings) |
1. |
Overture — Across the Ages of Media / Communication / Information |
Class 1 (M., April 3) — Introduction
Class 2 (W., April 5) — The Idea of Media
- Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message” (1964)
(Note: read only this essay. The PDF also includes another essay)
Class 3 (F. April 7) — The Age of Orality
- Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982)
Read the following pages:
- 17-27
- 29 (read the discussion of Marshall McLuhan on this page)
- 31-66
Important for students needing to switch sections or who are not yet enrolled in the course: To assist the TAs in managing section-switching and enrollment requests, please fill out this Google enrollment request form between Friday April 7 at 2pm and Sunday April 9 at noon if you are:
- enrolled in the course but need to switch sections,
- on the wait list and hope to enroll,
- not on the wait list and hope to crash the course.
Class 4 (M., April 10) — (Continued)
- [Continued from previous class.]
Required ungraded assignment (due by the time of your section meeting in Week 2) — Create your system for working with online readings. Because so many of the readings in this course are online, students must develop an organized system for annotating and saving copies of online materials according to one of the methods described in “Guide to Downloading and Managing Online Readings.” If you do not already have a systematic way to do this, start by saving and annotating two of the assigned readings for Week 1 of the course (originally PDFs) plus at least one of the readings for Week 2 that was originally a Web page. These are readings that you should download, store in an organized manner, and highlight or annotate.
For your section meeting this week, bring your laptop or other digital device and be prepared to show your TA your system for working with online readings (including your annotated copies of selected readings). If you do not own a laptop, tablet, or other digital device, then bring a printed copy of one reading that you have highlighed or annotated.
Class 5 (W., April 12) — The Rise of Literacy
- Plato, Myth of Theuth on the invention of writing (short excerpt from Plato’s Phaedrus)
- Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982), pp. 77-103
- Alberto Manguel,
- “The Silent Readers”, from his A History of Reading (1996)
- “How Pinocchio Learned to Read”, open-access version of essay from his A Reader on Reading (2011), read only pp. 1-9
Class 6 (F., April 14) — Reading in the Information Age?
- Distracted Reading (and “Unthought”)
- Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (2008)
[If you run out of the The Atlantic Monthly‘s free quota of articles, access this article here through the UCSB Libraries’ subscription]
- Paul La Farge, “The Deep Space of Digital Reading” (2016)
- N. Katherine Hayles, Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious (2017), pp. 9-14
(available on course Canvas)
- Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (2008)
- “Distant Reading” and Data Mining
- Jean-Baptiste Michel, Erez Lieberman Aiden, et al., “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books” (2011)
[paywalled; UCSB students have free access through the campus network or from off-campus through the UCSB VPN or Library Proxy server]
Alternative sites/versions of the article: site 1 | site 2 | site 3 (figures at end of article in this version)
- Jean-Baptiste Michel, Erez Lieberman Aiden, et al., “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books” (2011)
Class 7 (M., April 17) — “Strange Books”
- Familiarize yourself with the following three artist’s books (for a definition of “artist’s book,” see Wikipedia article):
- Agrippa: A Book of the Dead, an artist’s-book created in 1992 by Kevin Begos, Jr., Dennis Ashbaugh, and William Gibson. The work is documented on The Agrippa Files, which was created by UCSB English Dept. faculty and students in 2005. Read the following pages on The Agrippa Files site to learn about the artist’s book. (Note: the site is useable without the Flash reader that some of its pages originally featured) :
- Introduction
- Description of the book
- Photos of selected pages (“Deluxe” edition)
- Description and information about William Gibson’s poem on the diskette in the book
- Prof. Liu’s discussion of the diskette and code in the book (Alan Liu, “Cracking the Agrippa Code: How the Disk Worked”)
- Also be sure to read the full text of the William Gibson’s poem on the writer’s official sit
- Shelley Jackson
- “Snow” (2014-) (story/poem written in the media forms of snow and Instagram) (Note: if you do not have an Instagram account, you can get the essential idea of the work by looking on the course Canvas site at a screenshot of the most recent posts for the work and a text-only transcription of the whole work to date.)
- Scott Rettbert and Shelley Jackson, “Room for So Much World: A Conversation with Shelley Jackson” (2019) (Read the first half of the interview related to “Snow”)
- Danny Cannizzaro and Samantha Gorman, Pry (2014)
- Trailer video preview of Pry, a novella in the form of an iOS app for Apple iPad (Note: you do not need to buy the iOS app; it will be shown in lecture)
- Agrippa: A Book of the Dead, an artist’s-book created in 1992 by Kevin Begos, Jr., Dennis Ashbaugh, and William Gibson. The work is documented on The Agrippa Files, which was created by UCSB English Dept. faculty and students in 2005. Read the following pages on The Agrippa Files site to learn about the artist’s book. (Note: the site is useable without the Flash reader that some of its pages originally featured) :
2. |
The Rise of Digital
|
Class 8 (W., April 19) — The Communications Revolution & the Digital Principle
- Claude E. Shannon, “The Mathematical Theory of Communication,” pp. 3-6 (1948)
- Warren Weaver, “Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication” (1949)
Class 9 (F., April 21) — Computer Revolution (1): History of the Computer
- Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think” (1945) (read the editor’s introduction, and then sections 1 and 6-7 of Bush’s article)
- Paul E. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing (2003), pp. 13-36, 44-45
- Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine (1996), pp. 233-58
(available on course Canvas)
Class 10 (M., April 24) — Computer Revolution (2): Rise of the Network
- Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine (2003), pp. 283-97
(available on course Canvas)
- Richard T. Griffiths, “From ARPANET to World Wide Web” (2002)
- National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), “Beginner’s Guide to HTML,” Part I (2001)
Class 11 (W., April 26) — Computer Revolution (3): Emergence of Digital “New Media”
- Digital “New Media”
- Lev Manovitch, The Language of New Media (2001):
- pp. 18-48 (this starts at p. 30 of the PDF file: the section titled “What is New Media?”)
- 218-28 (this starts at p. 134 of the PDF file)
- Lev Manovitch, The Language of New Media (2001):
- “Web 2.0”
- Tim O’Reilly, “What is Web 2.0” (2005), read only the first Web page of this article (which has a total of five Web pages)
Class 12 (F., April 28) — Fiction and Modern Media / Communication / Information
- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1965) — by today’s class read at a minimum the first two chapters, pp. 1-30. (If possible, read to p. 88 by today’s class.)
(Print book)
(Please purchase from an online vendor or through the UCEN Bookstore. See info on specific editions and ordering options.)
- Optional readings:
- Help on the concept of entropy; See also these two short, fun videos: 4-minute video | 5-minute video (the latter includes explanation of “Maxwell’s Demon”)
- History of (and recent work on) “Maxwell’s Demon”
- About English Renaissance “revenge tragedies”
- About the Thurn & Taxis family and postal system
Essay #1: — Due by 11:59 pm, Pacific time, April 28: Essay 1 on the Future of Media, Communication, Information. (See assignment description and submission instructions. Submit assignment on course Canvas site here.)
Class 13 (M., May 1) — (Continued)
- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1965) — finish rest of the novel. (Print book)
Class 14 (W., May 3) — (Continued)
- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1965) — finish rest of the novel. (Print book)
Class 15 (F., May 5) — (Conclusion of lectures on Pynchon)
- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1965) — finish rest of the novel. (Print book)
(M., May 8) — Midterm Exam
50-minute exam in class on readings in the course to date. The exam is “factual” or “objective” in its coverage of the readings and ideas of the course. It is designed to reward students who have regularly kept up with the assignments and attended lectures and sections.
- (No blue books needed for exam, but bring a pen.)
3. |
The Postindustrial & Neoliberal Age
|
Class 16 (W., May 10) — Postindustrial “Knowledge Work”
- “Scientific Management” (The Original “Smart Work”)
- Frederick Winslow Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management (1911)
- Chap. 2; read only first 14 pages of the PDF.
- Excerpt on bricklaying
- Chap. 2; read only first 14 pages of the PDF.
- Frederick Winslow Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management (1911)
- “Knowledge Work” (Today’s Smart Work)
- Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), pp. 82-84 (on “creative destruction”)
- Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (1988), pp., 3-12
(available on course Canvas)
- Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992), pp. 1-45
(available on course Canvas)
- Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline (1990), pp. 3-14
(available on course Canvas)
Class 17 (F., May 12) — Neoliberal “Networked Society”
- William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation (1992), pp. 1-19, 50-66, 184-205, 214-16
(available on course Canvas)
- Wendy Brown interviewed by Timothy Shenk, “What Exactly is Neoliberalism?” (2015)
- Manuel Castells, “Materials for an Exploratory Theory of the Network Society” (2000)
(read only the abstract and the two sections titled “The Network Society: An Overview” and “Social Structure and Social Morphology: From Networks to Information Networks” on the pages numbered 9-17)
Class 18 (M., May 15) — Against All the Above
- Early “Cyberlibertarianism”
- John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” (1996)
- Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology” (1996). (Optional: for fun, read Louis Rossetto, Rebuttal of the Californian Ideology, 1998)
- Critical Art Ensemble, “Electronic Civil Disobedience” (1996)
(read only the main essay, not the appendices)
alternative site that works in iOS Safari browser (the essay is the first chapter of the whole book by the CAE at this site]
- Jodi (network artist pair): home page. Click around and see what you can understand about this page and its subpages. (Info about Jodi)
Essay #2: — Due by 11:59 pm, Pacific time, May 15: Essay 2 on Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. (See assignment description. Submit assignment on course Canvas site here.)
Class 19 (W., May 17) — (Continued)
- Donna J. Haraway, Excerpts from “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1985), chapter 8 in her book Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991)
— The PDF contains the whole book. Read only following excerpts from the “A Cyborg Manifesto” chapter in the book:
- pp. 149-155
- pp. 161-165
- pp. 170-173
- p. 181
Class 20 (F., May 19) — Fiction About Postindustrial / Neoliberal Work & Power
- William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)
(Print book)
(Please purchase from an online vendor or through the UCEN Bookstore. See info on specific editions and ordering options.)
- For the best understanding of Professor Liu’s lectures, read half the novel by this class if you can.
Class 21 (M., May 22) — (Continued)
- William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984) (Print book)
- For the best understanding of Professor Liu’s lectures, finish the novel by this class if you can.
Required ungraded assignment (due before your section meeting in Week 8) — Spreadsheet on Being Human in the Age of Knowledge Work. (See description of assignment. Submit assignment on course Canvas site here.)
Note: This assignment is preparatory for the upcoming, last essay assignment in the course. (Look ahead to the instructions for Essay 3 on the Assignments page.)
Class 22 (W., May 24) — (Continued)
- William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984) (Print book)
- Finish the novel by this class if you have not already done so.
Class 23 (F., May 26) — (Conclusion of lectures on Neuromancer)
- William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984) (Print book)
- Finish the novel by this class if you have not already done so.
4. |
Processing Literature
|
Class 24 (W., May 31) — What is Text in the Digital Age?
- William Warner, Kimberly Knight, and UCSB Transliteracies History of Reading Group, “In the Beginning was the Word: A Visualization of the Page as Interface” (Note: the original Flash animation, which was interactive, is no longer viewable because the Flash program reached “end of life” at the end of 2020 and is no longer supported in current browsers and operating systems. View instead the MP4 video version, or download the AVI or WMV video versions.)
- Yin Liu, “Ways of Reading, Models for Text, and the Usefulness of Dead People” [PDF or HTML] (2013)
- Michael Witmore, “Text: A Massively Addressable Object” (2012)
- Wikipedia, “Markup Language” (read just for the main concepts, not the details)
- Alan Liu, “Transcendental Data: Toward a Cultural History and Aesthetics of the New Encoded Discourse” (2004) (read only pp. 49-57)
Essay #3: — Due by 11:59 pm, Pacific time, May 31: Essay 3 on Being Human in the Age of Knowledge Work. (See assignment description. Submit assignment on course Canvas site here.)
Class 25 (M., June 5) — Text Analysis
- Ted Underwood, “Seven Ways Humanists Are Using Computers to Understand Text” (2015)
- Ryan Heuser and Long Le-Khac, “A Quantitative Literary History of 2,958 Nineteenth-Century British Novels: The Semantic Cohort Method” (2012)
Required ungraded assignment (due by 24 hours before your section meeting in Week 10) — Text Analysis Exercise & Short Commentary. (See description of assignment. Submit assignment on course Canvas site here.)
Class 26 (W., June 7) — Topic Modeling
- David M. Blei, “Probabilistic Topic Models” (2013)
— (read only to end of p. 79, before the math begins)
- Ted Underwood, “Topic Modeling Made Just Simple Enough” (2012)
- Andrew Goldstone’s interface for exploring topic models. The Signs model has some extra, later-developed features. Especially helpful in learning how to work with these models is the guide page on “Interpreting the topic model of Signs“
Class 27 (F., June 9) — Conclusion: What Is Literature For in the Information Age? /
What Is Information For in Literature?
- The thought-prompts for this concluding lecture are the ideas of “deformance” and “glitch” in the literary/artistic use of information technology.
- Lisa Samuels and Jerome J. McGann, “Deformance and Interpretation” (1999) — (read only p. 25-30, and also get a sense of the “deformance” experiments in section V, p. 36-45, and the appendix, p. 50-53) [alternate link]
[paywalled; UCSB students have free access through the campus network or from off-campus through the UCSB VPN or Library Proxy server]- Also available in an unpaginated HTML version (read on;y Sections 1-2 and the first four paragraphs of Section 3, and also get a sense of the “deformance” experiments in section V and the appendix)
- Mark Sample, “Notes Towards a Deformed Humanities” (2012)
- Rosa Menkman, The Glitch Moment(um)] (2011) (read pp. 7-31: “Introduction,” “Glitch Manifesto,” “A Technological Approach to Noise,” and “The Perception of Glitch”)
See also Menkman’s site: http://rosa-menkman.blogspot.com
- Lisa Samuels and Jerome J. McGann, “Deformance and Interpretation” (1999) — (read only p. 25-30, and also get a sense of the “deformance” experiments in section V, p. 36-45, and the appendix, p. 50-53) [alternate link]
(W., June 14, 4:00-4:50 pm) — Final Exam

A Note About Access to Reading Materials For This Course
There are two required print books that must be purchased (see info).
All other readings are online. Paywalled articles can be accessed over the UCSB network (or from off-campus by using the campus Pulse VPN service (recently purchased and rebranded by the Ivanti company) or the campus Library Proxy Server. You can also try to find open-access versions of paywalled materials using the Unpaywall extension for the Chrome or Firefox browsers. (Advice: It is a good idea to download materials as early as possible in case, for example, PDFs that are currently available open-access, on the open net, or through a UCSB Library digital database subscription later become inaccessible.)
Because so many readings are online (an increasingly prevalent trend in college courses), students will need to develop a method or workflow for themselves that optimizes their ability to study the materials. While everyone has their own personal preferences and technical constraints, the following guide includes suggested options for handling online materials: