MDST510-1/ENCR510-1 (Schedule # 14991/11371)
University of Virginia
Spring 2005
M 3:30-4:45, W 5:00-6:15 :: M Clemons 322A, W Bryan 203
Mr. David Golumbia
Ms. Kimberly Tryka

Textual Markup and the Material Book

This is an advanced seminar in the theory and practice of textual markup and its relationship to printed books, and particularly the nature of the current tools for digitally representing print. Half our time will be devoted to short readings in the history and theory of book production, with particular attention to two areas: current issues in text-oriented digital markup (especially XML-based protocols, including TEI, as well as issues involving the Semantic Web and RDF), and the nature and history of artist's books. The other half of the course will be devoted to practical work in marking up artist's books according to a proposed scheme that will also be an object of discussion as we proceed. Requirements include two digital projects, and a final project or 8-10pp. critical paper. Permission of instructor required; prior background in digital textual media and markup, including HTML and XML, is preferred.

Texts

Books (at UVA bookstore)
Required texts

  1. Espen J. Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature
  2. Grigoris Antoniou and Frank van Harmelen, A Semantic Web Primer
  3. Johanna Drucker, The Century of Artists' Books
  4. David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery, eds., The Book History Reader

Recommended texts

  1. Elliotte Rusty Harold, XML 1.1 Bible, 3rd edition
  2. Sal Mangano, XSLT Cookbook
  3. Jerome McGann, Radiant Textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web

Articles (in toolkit or online)

  1. Syd Bauman and Terry Catapano. "TEI and the Encoding of the Physical Structure of Books." Computers and the Humanities 33:1-2 (April 1999), 113-127. (toolkit)
  2. Dino Buzzetti, "Digital Representation and the Text Model." New Literary History 33:1 (2002), 61-88 (toolkit).
  3. Steven J. DeRose, "XML and the TEI." Computers and the Humanities 33:1-2 (April 1999), 11-30. (toolkit)
  4. Allen Renear, Elli Mylonas, and David Durand. "Refining Our Notion of What Text Really Is: The Problem of Overlapping Hierarchies." Research in Humanities Computing (1996). (online at http://www.stg.brown.edu/resources/stg/monographs/ohco.html)
  5. Allen Renear, "Text Encoding" (from Schreibman, Siemens, and Unsworth, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Digital Humanities)
  6. Michael Smith, "Take My Advice: Don't Learn XML" O'Reilly website, July 18, 2001. (online at http://xml.oreilly.com/news/dontlearn_0701.html)
  7. Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), "A Gentle Introduction to XML" (online at http://www.tei-c.org/P4X/SG.html)
  8. Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), "Underlying Principles and Intended Use" (online at http://www.tei-c.org/P4X/AB.html#ABDPIU)

Grading

Grades for the course will be based on assignments and participation as follows:

Honor Code

All work for this course is subject to the University's Honor Code.

Week-by-week syllabus

  1. Week of Jan 17
  2. Week of Jan 24
  3. Week of Jan 31
  4. Week of Feb 7
  5. Week of Feb 14
  6. Week of Feb 21
  7. Week of Feb 28
  8. Week of Mar 7
  9. Week of Mar 14
  10. Week of Mar 21
  11. Week of Mar 28
  12. Week of Apr 4
  13. Week of Apr 11
  14. Week of Apr 18
  15. Week of Apr 25
  16. Week of May 2

 

Last updated January 19, 2005 .

Valid XHTML 1.0!