Comparative Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era

Electronic Mediations

by N. Katherine Hayles (Editor), Jessica Pressman (Editor)

For the past few hundred years, Western cultures have relied on print. When writing was accomplished by a quill pen, inkpot, and paper, it was easy to imagine that writing was nothing more than a means by which writers could transfer their thoughts to readers. The proliferation of technical media in the latter half of the twentieth century has revealed that the relationship between writer and reader is not so simple. From telegraphs and typewriters to wire recorders and a sweeping array of digital computing devices, the complexities of communications technology have made mediality a central concern of the twenty-first century. Despite the attention given to the development of the media landscape, relatively little is being done in our academic institutions to adjust. In Comparative Textual Media , editors N. Katherine Hayles and Jessica Pressman bring together an impressive range of essays from leading scholars to address the issue, among them Matthew Kirschenbaum on archiving in the digital era, Patricia Crain on the connection between a child’s formation of self and the possession of a book, and Mark Marino exploring how to read a digital text not for content but for traces of its underlying code. Primarily arguing for seeing print as a medium along with the scroll, electronic literature, and computer games, this volume examines the potential transformations if academic departments embraced a media framework. Ultimately, Comparative Textual Media offers new insights that allow us to understand more deeply the implications of the choices we, and our institutions, are making. Stephanie Boluk, Vassar College; Jessica Brantley, Yale U; Patricia Crain, NYU; Adriana de Souza e Silva, North Carolina State U; Johanna Drucker, UCLA; Thomas Fulton, Rutgers U; Lisa Gitelman, New York U; William A. Johnson, Duke U; Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, U of Maryland; Patrick LeMieux; Mark C. Marino, U of Southern California; Rita Raley, U of California, Santa Barbara; John David Zuern, U of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism

344 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Mills College Library]

302.231 C73727 2013

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like all edited collections, there were some contributions that felt more fully formed than others here. However, the introduction is spot on, and I felt Hayles and Pressman did an excellent organizing the collection by theme and introducing each section in a meaningful way. Of the chapters, I most appreciated the ones in the "Practices" section and found William Goldman's discussion of bookrolls and Patricia Crain's exploration of children readers particularly compelling. How such practices and uses surrounding more contemporary textual media might be chronicled is beyond the scope of each of these historically situated essays, but the historical archives they detail provide great insight into the role of reading and the material of the text factored into the value their respective objects held (and, in Crain's case, continue to hold).