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Announcement: History of Reading Working Group

Leader: William Warner

Group Members: Donna Beth Ellard, Lisa Gitelman, Mark Goble, Paula McDowell, Carol Braun Pasternack, Clifford Siskin, Alison Walker

  • How, over the long history of reading, did the interface that linked writers to readers change?
  • (more…)

Announcement: Research

Events

Working Papers


Discussion of Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

William Warner, Professor of English, UCSB
Discussion of Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory
History of Reading Group Event
Thursday, April 23, 3:30 PM
UCSB, South Hall 2635

The Transliteracies History of Reading Group is pleased to announce a discussion of Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social, led by Bill Warner. Latour’s recent book both introduces Actor-Network-Theory and challenges contemporary assumptions about what we call the “social.” Professor Warner will lead a discussion of the following sections of Latour’s book:

Reassembling the Social


  • “Third Source of Uncertainty: Objects too Have Agency” (63-86)
  • “First Move: Localizing the Global” (173-190)
  • and for the highly motivated, the “Introduction” (1-17).

Refreshments will be served.

Following is a summary of Reassembling the Social from the Oxford University Press website: (more…)

Brian Cummings, “Augustine and the History of Reading:from Post-Medieval to Prenaissance”

Wednesday March 18, 4:00pm, UCSB McCune Conference Room HSSB 6020

Brian Cummings is Professor of English at the University of Sussex, where he was Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies from 2004 to 2008. He is the author of The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford University Press, 2002), which was named a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year for 2003.

This event is co-sponsored by UCSB’s Renaissance Studies program and the IHC’s History of Material Texts RFG.

History of Reading Conference: Reading as a Social Technology

Friday, March 13, 9:00 am – 5:30 pm McCune Conference Room HSSB 6020, UCSB

The History of Reading Group (a Transliteracies research working group) is hosting a one-day, interdisciplinary conference that will provide a forum for sharing recent research findings in the history of reading, with an eye toward investigating the technologies that shape reading as a social experience. The keynote speakers will be Adrian Johns (University of Chicago) and Elaine Treharne (Florida State University).

Sponsored by the University of California’s Transliteracies Project and the IHC’s History of Material Texts RFG.

Conference Schedule (more…)

Transliteracies History of Reading Group (HORG) Workshop Meeting, Dec. 1-2, 2006

Friday, December 1 2635 South Hall, UCSB
Presentations (PowerPoint files, etc.) are in most cases restricted to Transliteracies participants (developers login) due to the in-progress nature of materials and to intellectual-property issues.

1:00 PM — Greetings and brief self-introductions
2635 South Hall, UCSB
Bill Warner (English Department, UCSB).ppt

1:30 PM — 1st Session: Old Media/ New Media
Alison Walker (English Department, UCLA)(.ppt)
Joshua Neves (Film and Media Studies, UCSB)(.doc) (.pdf)
“History of Reading, a Media Studies Perspective” (.ppt) byLisa Gitelman (Program in Media Studies, Catholic University)

3:00 PM — 3:30 Break

3:30-4:20 PM — 2nd Session: Reading and Modernism and S/F
Robin Chin (English Department, UCSB) (.ppt)
Mark Goble (English Department, UC Irvine)
Lisa Swanstrom (Comparative Literature, UCSB) (.ppt) (.doc) (html)

4:20-5:30 PM — Tech Show-and-Tell on an “open laptop”
(Giles Bergel, Bill Warner, Lisa Swanstrom ….)

8:00 PM — Dinner at Opal Restaurant and Bar, 1325 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101; 805-966-9676

Saturday, December 2 The Upham Hotel, 1404 De la Vina Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101; 805-962-0058

9:00-10:00 AM — Overview of Transliteracies (.ppt) by Alan Liu (English, UCSB)
30 minutes; discussion 30 minutes

10:00-11:20 AM — 3rd Session: Interfaces and the Augmentation of Reading
Bill Warner (English Department, UCSB)
Clifford Siskin (.jpg 1) & (.jpg 2) (English Department, New York University)

11:30-12:30 AM — Discussion of terminology: let’s define our terms (please); discussion led by Paula McDowell (.doc) (English Department, New York University)
Reading, interface, literacy, print culture, accommodation, augmentation, reading machine, interactivity, multi-media reading, etc.

12:30 — 2:00 Lunch break and brisk walk
Lunch at 1PM at Café Buenos Aires, 1316 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA; 805-963-0242

2:00-4:00 — 4th Session: History of the Book: Directions for Research
Carol Braun Pasternack (English Department, UCSB) (.ppt)
Giles Bergel (English Department, UCSB)
Jim Kearney (English Department, UCSB)
Paula McDowell (English Department, New York University)

4:00-4:15 — Coffee break

4:15-5:15 — Discussion, or where do we go from here?

5:15 — Pre-dinner walk about the town
7:30 PM — Dinner at Fresco at the Beach, 901 East Cabrillo Boulevard, Santa Barbara, CA 93103; 805.963.0111

*Important Note: Do not go to the Fresco’s on State Street! Our dinner reservations are for Fresco at the Beach!

Invisibililty of Reading

How can one study that which is invisible?

  • find the traces left by reading

  • document what people said or wrote about reading

  • track changes in the interfaces for reading