Class 08: Reading Hypertext

Held Thursday, September 16, 1999

Summary

• Writing issues to ponder
  • Williams, Style, Chapter 1
  • Booth, Columb, and Williams, The Craft of Research, Chapter 1
• On the overhwelming terminology of postmodernist essays
  • Stuart Moulthrop, ``You Say You Want a Revolution? Hypertext and the Laws of Media''
• Discussion: How does one read hyperfiction?
  • The Victorian Web
  • Project Perseus
  • Bolter, Writing Space, Chapters 6 and 7
• Assigned (due Tuesday):
  • Williams: Clarity
  • Bolter: Writing Space, Chapters 8 and 9
  • Articles on Hyperfiction from the New York Times Book Review

Handouts

• Daily handouts:
  • Outline of class 8
  • Reading assignments (due Tuesday):
    • Williams: Clarity
    • Bolter: Chapters 8 and 9
    • Articles on Hyperfiction from the New York Times Book Review
• The aforementioned articles (hardcopy only)

Notes

• I hope everyone has remembered that we were to start at 8:30 rather than 8:00 today.
  • We will, however, move back to 8:15 on Tuesday.
• Don't forget that the bibliography assignment is due next Tuesday.
• Anyone who hasn't turned in the citation exercise should do so today.
• You may want to visit the links page at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/readings.html for a truly interesting experience in postmodernism. Try the colalborative sentence.
  • Also try The postmodern essay generator
• Don't forget: tomorrow is the last day to drop or add classes. (Not that I want you to, but the college takes those deadlines seriously.)
• I hope that some of you will choose to attend today's convocation.
• Meetings today and tomorrow are optional. Let me know whether or not you plan to meet with me.
• Don't forget the Borges reading for Tuesday.
• As you may have noticed, I've dropped the table-of-contents and cover sheet for the daily handout. I hope you don't mind.

Preliminaries

Reflections on Williams

• What, if anything, did you derive from the Williams readings?
• Are there questions you have on those readings?
• Starting next week, we'll use the first part of each class to discuss writing. On Tuesday, we'll work on issues from chapter 2 of Style.

Terminology

• I'd asked you to make sure that you understood all the terms in Moulthop.
• Here are some that I thought you might want to have considered (some of which he's clearly using differently than we might, many of which he's chosen for quite careful meanings): dialectic (30), gnostic (2), hyperreal (1), miscegenation (27), modernity (2), neologism (9), nomology (9), operational simluation (1), paragnostic (22), paralogy (2), parallax (22), polysequential (27), portmanteau (9), postmodernism (4), recursion (30), semiotics (16), syncretic (30), and transgressive (27).
• How might you find definitions for these words? This is what I tried:
  • The Merriam Webster WWWebster Dictionary at http://www.m-w.com/netdict.htm
  • The Altavista search engine at http://www.altavista.com
  • k.i.s.s. of the panopticon
  • I did not try any printed sources.
• And yes, I'm probably violating (or is that substantiating) some postmodernist theory by asking you to carefully consider the meanings of the words he uses.

Discussion: Reading Hypertext

• Once again, we'll use our formalized discussion techniques (with the addition of ``the arrows'').
• Today's potential questions:
  • How do the ways we read nonfiction hypertext differ from the ways that we read nonfiction ``linear'' text?
  • Last class, some claimed that new skills are necessary to read hypermedia. What are those skills?
  • Are particular categories of nonfiction more amenable to hypertextuality than others?

History

Monday, 22 March 1999

• Created as a blank outline. (Can you tell what I was doing during Spring break?)

Wednesday, 15 September 1999

• Filled in some details.