My personal prelims reading list, draft 1
So I’m thinking about my first prelims essay using the core list for the most part, with some of my own in there too. My reasoning is seeing both essay as moving toward my dissertation, so the second essay will continue from the first essay but become more focused on my interests.
As requested by a few people, here it is—my reading list (just twice as long as it needs to be):
1. Virilio: The Aesthetics of Disappearance (Semiotext(e) / Double Agents)
2. Lost Dimension
3. Speed and Politics
4. The Vision Machine
5. Jean Baudrillard: Simulacra and Simulation (The Body, In Theory: Histories of
Cultural Materialism)
6. Lev Manovich: The Language of New Media
7. Brandt: Literacy in American Lives
8. Literacy As Involvement: The Acts of Writers, Readers, and Texts
9. “Accumulating Literacy: Writing and Learning to Write in the Twentieth
Century,” College English, 57(6), p. 649-668.
10. Smit: the End of Composition Studies
11. Bourdieu: The Logic of Practice
12. Plantinga: Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film
13. Wysocki, et al.: Writing New Media
14. Hayles: Writing Machines
15. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and
Informatic
16. Graeme Turner: Film as Social Practice
17. Chatman: Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film
18. Eisentein: Film Form
19. McLuhan: Understanding Media
20. the Medium is the Massage
21. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man
22. Selber: Multiliteracies for a Digital Age
23. Turkle: Life on the Screen
24. Castronova: Synthetic Worlds
25. Hawisher/Selfe: Passion, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies
26. Haraway: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women
27. Mattelart & Mattelart: Rethinking media Theory
28. Sirc: English Composition as a Happening
29. Blair: “The possibility and actuality of visual arguments.” Argumentation and
Advocacy. Summer 1996 33(1) 23: 1996.
30. Kinross, Robin. “The Rhetoric of Neutrality.” Design Issues, Vol. 2, No. 2.
(Autumn, 1985), pp. 18-30.
31. Cynthia L. Selfe’s (Ed.) Multimodal Composition: Resources for Teachers.
Hampton Press.
32. Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Composition in a New Key.”
33. Iser, Wolfgang. “Interaction between Text and Reader.” Book History Reader.
Eds. David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery, London: Routledge, 2002.
34. The Implied Reader
35. Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images: The Grammar Visual
Design. London: Routledge, 1996.
36. Kress, G. Before writing: Rethinking the paths to literacy. London: Routledge.
37. Literacy in the New Media Age (Literacies)
38. Lanham, Richard A. “What’s Next for Text?
39. Daly, Elizabeth (2003) “Expanding the Concept of Literacy,” EDUCAUSE
Review, p. 33-40.
40. Trayner, Beverly. Multiliteracies: A Theoretical Overview
41. The New London Group. A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social
Futures
42. Westbrook, Steve. “Visual Rhetoric in a Culture of Fear: Impediments to
Multimedia Production.” College English. May 2006 68(5) 457, 2006.
43. Jenkins, Henry: Convergence Culture
44. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Media Consumers in a Digital Age
45. Deemer, English Composition as a Happening
46. Lutz, Making Freshman English a Happening
47. Macrorie, Blow that Horn, Man
48. Words in the way
49. The Movies Don’t Move
50. Perl, Writing True
51. Alexander García Düttmann, The ABC of visual culture, or a new decadence of
illiteracy
52. Rifkin: Waiting and Seeing
53. From Structure to Enigma and back perhaps
54. Mitchell: Showing Seeing a critique of visual culture
55. WJT Mitchell, Picture Theory
56. Fish, Doing what comes Naturally
57. Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art” (in Poetry, Language, Thought)
58. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
59. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
60. Worsham, “The Question Concerning Invention: Hermeneutics and the Genesis of
Writing” (in Pre/Text 8 [1987]: 197-244)
61. Dyson, Anne Haas. Writing Superheroes. New York: Teachers College Press,
1997.
62. Gonzalez, Norma and Luis Moll. “Funds of Knowledge for Teaching in Latino
Households.” Urban Education, 29 (19950: 443-470.
63. Applebee, Curriculum as conversation
64. Dewey: Democracy and education
65. The child and the curriculum
66. Burke, K. (1945). A Grammar of Motives. U of California P.
67. Chandler, D. (2001). Semiotics: The basics. Routledge.
68. Jakobson, R. (1985). Verbal art, verbal sign, verbal time. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
69. Jameson, F. (1972). The prison-house of language: A critical account of structuralism. Princeton: University Press.
70. Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
71. Kristeva, J. (1980). Desire in language: A semiotic approach to literature and art. New York: Columbia University Press.
72. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1991.
73. Schmandt-Besserat, D. (1997). How writing came about. Austin: University of Texas Press.
74. Witte, S. P. (1992). Context, text, intertext: Toward a constructivist semiotic of writing. Written Communication, 9, 237-308.
75. Bolter, Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print, Second Edition
76. Landow, Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)
77. Lankshear: New Literacies
78. Gee: Situated Language and Learning
79. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy
80. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (1994)
81. Barthes, From Work to Text
82. Jeff Rice, “1963 Comp Revolution” &
83. “Networks and New Media”
84. Shaviro, Connected
85. Carolyn Miller, “Writing in a Culture of Simulation.” Towards a Rhetoric of Everyday Life.
Yeah, that’s a few more than 40. I read the theory list. Would you like my opinions about the texts you chose from that list? Or, maybe I should ask you why you chose some of those texts. It isn’t always clear, to me, what the unifying theme/idea/approach is.
By the way, one of my favorite books from the old theory list is one that you don’t have listed: Neel’s Plato, Derrida, and Writing. Practical application of both men’s theories within the context of the freshman composition classroom.
Comment by k8 — October 13, 2006 @ 11:54 pm
Actually, I should add the Neel to my list. As for my choices from the periphery lists, not having read most of them, I chose by familiarity with the author and then by title (does it sound interesting?). But once I actually start writing on the faculty question and find start to focus on my question, I’ll get some faculty guidance and a better idea of what I need to be reading.
Comment by Rick — October 14, 2006 @ 1:19 pm
ok - here are my reactions to those texts I read as part of my customized theory/rhetoric list plus others. I’m sure this is more than you wanted to know.
#23 - I like this book, but I don’t know if it is something I would consider a foundational (aka prelims) text. But I suppose the faculty will ultimately make that decision.
#25 - The Haraway text is obviously somewhat canonical, but she has written quite a bit since its publication. You might want something newer.
#33/#34 - I doubt you need two Iser texts. Obviously, The Implied Reader is the more canonical of the two and the one that most people refer to.
- same issue with the Kress texts. I don’t think you need that many of his titles. Yes, he is important, but I think that you will find that he also has some essays in some of the collections you’ve chosen.
- same with Jenkins - pick one
#55 - You really don’t need to read the whole Fish text. It is huge, and there is a lot of repetition of ideas since it is a collection of his essays. It is about 600 pages. Let me know if you want to take a look at my copy (which I wish I had’t actually bought).
#57 - I know, it’s Locke, but do really need this title? I read it in undergrad and wasn’t that thrilled to read it again. If you want to know about Locke, read a synopsis first and decide if you really need this as a foundational text.
#58 - I could take or leave Wittgenstein - it really doesn’t seem ‘to go’ with your list, though.
#59 - I really really loved the Worsham text!
#60 - I really enjoyed this text, but it doesn’t seem to fit your list’s focus.
#61 - see above
#62 - see above
#63/#64 - see above or pick one of them.
- if you are interested in the New London Group’s work, why haven’t you listed the edited edition Multiliteracies?
Comment by k8 — October 15, 2006 @ 6:46 pm
Great list! I would add–or perhaps revise–Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition to include A Thousand Plateaus, and in particular the rhizome and body without organs chapters. Also, you may consider Barthes’s Camera Lucida, which is a fantastic study of the photographic image. Truly his sexiest book…
Comment by scot — October 16, 2006 @ 9:40 pm