who indiscreetly venture

We were curious to know how it happened that many of the outward branches of those trees came to be broken off in that solitary place, and were informed that the bears are so discreet as not to trust their unwieldy bodies on the smaller limbs of the tree, that would not bear their weight; but after venturing as far as is safe, which they can judge to an inch, they bite off the end of the branch, which falling down, they are content to finish their repast upon the ground. In the same cautious manner they secure the acorns that grow on the weaker limbs of the oak. And it must be allowed that, in these instances, a bear carries instinct a great way, and acts more reasonably than many of his betters, who indiscreetly venture upon frail projects that will not bear them.

// from William Byrd and Edmund Ruffin (ed), The Westover Manuscripts: Containing the History of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina; A Journey to the land of Eden, a.D. 1733; and A Progress to the Mines. Written from 1728 to 1736, and Now First Published (1841)

Minding my "P"s and "B"s

Posed post practitioners been bring be up by piece pattern!

Publication observes Presbyterian, complained being Episcopalian bishops between Bishops. Presbyters both, both prominent "b" "p" pattern, bishops "b" "p." Prominent presbyters "p" "b" beginning pattern "b" "p." Both bilabial plosives members produced stopped by lips.

"B" "p" proliferate veritable partial pile up. Brief prelaty pastor, parish, Archbishop. Books pluralists bachelor parishioner private protestations chop Episcopacy palace. Metropolitan penance pusillanimous breast politic presses open birthright privilege. Parliament abrogated bud liberty printing Prelatical people.

Pointing provided by "b" "p" explicit presbyters. Prelates block part opposite, opposite "p" -- syllable break opposite superficially, but.

Put interpretation brings problems practiced pattern.

Put pattern bearer, build countable presence, "b" "p" passage back attempt. Begin, Presbyter -- but Priest places poetry, prose, plays.

Problem properties interpretive; alphabet patterns, repetition abound. Patterns produced alphabetic patterns imputed arbitrarily patterns by.

By began interpretive proposition, believes episcopal priests oppressors, despite apparent worship proposition. Pattern elaborated interpretive hypothesis; pattern noticeability because interpretation place picking.

Numbers prompt interpretive hypothesis. Be. By capability disposal, incredible computing power patterns, by patterns. Begin interpretively.

Proceed place; appear program.

But --

Put expected surprised! Surprise! Been up; computer's ability beyond appears be pretty

computer, opposed capable playing.

Point place be embracing cosmopolitan perspective. Pushing big keeps dropping Europe. Be pretentiousness sympathetic Paris! Be experiences!

Possible; but between computer program. Happened simply, been books patterns;

been purportedly representative sample. Contemplation produced problem, possibly process patterns -- deep apprehension.

Computer corpus put potentially bodies -- briskly stop program.

Piles become between practiced samples. By priesthood, enterprise promise encompassing bargain bit provides, predicts scholarship.

Interpretive payoff! Be payoff! Been pretty; perhaps burgeoning computer-assisted interpretive pruning paths opened up by possibilities multiply?

Begins by, by propose. Keeps deep prolonged.

Hypothesis pursued point. Point place stop. Point keep going.

Explains browsing. Help browsing. Picking numbers. Interpretive hypothesis accept stumbling. Broadly, computer programs help.

Accepts be incapacity, because numbers produce, provoke interpretive; provide concepts practically discernible!

Presents ramped up been about practice. Hypothesis: process poem poem poem poem impetus hypotheses poem produce poems. Interpretation computers multiply process, opening up serendipitous paths performed computer-based been human-based computers.

But by interpretive paths, basis but build platform prompted by numbers. Fellowship

project perfection correspond typically been. Enable better bearers disruptive double by beleaguered.

But proclaimed place practice by between, between, between play.

Hood's interactive educational instruments

"Many Elizabethan mathematical books had instruments that could be assembled from paper cutouts on their pages. Thomas Hood took these pedagogical examples to heart and in 1597 constructed a vellum instrument from four diagrams that illustrated the theoretical and practical aspects of astrology. Hood found a way, through the manipulation of ingenious revolving gears and overlays mounted on vellum and pinned together, to illustrate in one view the relationship between plants, the signs of the zodiac, and the parts of the human body they governed. Much like a mdoern PowerPoint or overhead projector transparency, Hood's instrument was a pedagogical display intended to facilitate efficient and effective education by encouraging his students to actually manipulate an instrument." (Deborah Harkness, The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution)

[Terrible scan of Hood's instruments, MS Additional 71495 (British Library), from the image printed in Harkness's book. Permission not asked; despite the instruments having been scanned for the book, there appears to be no digital copies available through the BL's digital collections. Consider this grainy image my plea to make the high-res scan available to researchers.]

This paper instrument was assembled wrong when it was "discovered" at the British Library in 1994 (Stephen Johnston, "The astrological instruments of Thomas Hood").

Hood's instruments remind me of the twentieth-century educational volvelles Jessica Helfand displays in Reinventing the Wheel.

In the book quoted above, Harkness points out that vernacular mathematics instruction became popular during Elizabeth's reign -- it was advertised on streets, taught in informal classes at home, discussed in public lectures and aided by pedagogical instruments like Thomas Hood's. Interestingly, many of the twentieth-century educational volvelles Helfand catalogues are also functional advertisements for domestic products like bread and iceboxes. The history of paper volvelles weaves in and out of the history of democratizing -- and commercializing -- education.

Remixing Freshman Comp

I'm teaching Writing 20 this semester, Duke's freshman composition course and the only course required of all Duke undergrads.

Enrollment for each course is capped firmly at 12, so dozens of sections are taught each semester by a mix of grad students (across many disciplines), post-docs (also across many disciplines) and Thompson Writing Program faculty. Each course is (kinda, sorta) a "content" course -- everything from food science and pirates to captivity narratives is on the docket this semester -- but of course writing must be a significant portion of each section's curriculum.

My section is "Cut/Copy/Paste: Remixing Words" (syllabus here). My students have a wide array of interests, from neuroscience and art history to engineering and computer programming. To make this class most useful to everyone (myself included), I've tried to develop a few strategies -- most pulled from creative writing courses -- for mixing up the freshman comp course.

• Busting the content/criticism divide. No traditional lit-crit compositions; no five-page thesis-driven essays on a "major theme" in Hamlet, no close readings of Keats. This genre does a few things well (that clause was a struggle for me to write, and I'm not sure I believe it), but none of those things (whatever they may be) serve students planning on graduating in 2015. We inhabit a different textual ecology than the one that invented literary criticism; our toolbox of critical methods should reflect that.
• In-class remix exercises. Toward that end, our critical inquiry begins by practicing the methods of the artists we'll be studying. We're reading Breton on automatism; then we're doing some automatic writing. We're reading Burroughs on cut-ups, then cutting up Burroughs. We're reading Goldsmith on uncreative writing, then reading him backwards. Fill in the blanks for hypertext, digital poetry generators, flarf, collaborative writing, and audio remix. While I hope this encourages students to take art seriously -- that is, to engage actively with these ideas, and encounter them in all their transformative potential -- I'm also hoping these exercises will give students a few very basic skills and literacies in media production that they can build upon in future studies. (And if they never learn anything else about digital media, at least the black box has been cracked open, just a bit.**) Most importantly, by scooting around the edges of more traditional writing practices, I'm hoping these methods take a sledgehammer to one of the scariest things about any freshman comp course: the blank white screen waiting to be filled with "interpretation." We'll fiddle around with words that we didn't produce first in order to learn the mechanisms of writing. Once we know how the machine works, the rest is dictionary roulette.
• Lab report. That all being said, there is one assignment in a traditional genre: the lab report. Students will perform a writing "experiment" on the class -- something like a surrealist exquisite corpse exercise, but (I'm hoping) a little more involved. They write a hypothesis beforehand (what will this exercise teach us about writing?) and a lab report afterwards detailing their process and conclusions. In addition to helping us investigate what makes sense (and nonsense) in writing, this should prompt some reflection on the cross-fertilization between (experimental) literary criticism and (experimental) science.
• Distributed readings. Several times throughout the semester, we all read something different for class. I did this mostly because I couldn't decide on just three digital poems to teach; but I'm hoping the experience of, for instance, browsing the Electronic Literature Directory will give everyone a taste of a wide range of works, and that choosing one to discuss in class will encourage inter-(rather than intra-)textual connections. Distributed experiences/encounters == greater collective knowledge. Plus, we all know writing is social -- right? Well, so is reading. In fact, when we all read something different, reading isn't that much different from writing, since the process of plugging your thoughts on your reading into a group conversation is similar to the process of communicating your relationship to ideas in text.

If you have any experience with these or similar exercises, I welcome your thoughts. I'm not sure how any of this -- particularly the in-class exercises -- will work yet, as I've not taught this course before and, in my graduate career, have only taken one course that attempts similar methods. (It was a course on digital writing at MIT, taught by Nick Montfort; and while Nick attempted to have us do some surrealist exercises in class, we were a small, lumpy group, and I'm not sure his enthusiasm really took root in our phyllosilicate-heavy soil. Sorry, Nick.) But even a small remix of the usual freshman comp should yield results worth replicating.

** It is also entirely possible -- probable, even -- that, when it comes to media production, I will learn more from them than they will from me. Which would be awesome.

A Brief History of Authoterrorism

ANTIBOOKCLUB, a new publishing (ad)venture out of Chicago, released its first book this fall, A Brief History of Authoterrorism. It's a sometimes funny, sometimes odd, always delightful anthology chronicling just how far authors will go to promote their work. I wrote a wee bit of aca-fiction for the book. It involves Leibniz's binary system, the history of copyright law and a rare book room OCR mystery. (Of course. What else would I write about?!)

It's beautifully edited and designed by Gabriel Levinson. Do check it out, and support the project if you can.

"Becoming Plant" up on postmedieval's open review

A draft of my essay "Becoming Plant: Magnifying a Microhistory of Media Circuits" is now online as part of postmedieval's crowd review for the special issue, "Becoming-Media," co-edited by Martin Foys and Jen Boyle.*

It deals with Nehemiah Grew's The Anatomy of Plants (1682); medieval marvels and early comparative anatomy; the changing book of nature trope; epitomes and compendia models of reproduction; and the codex form as a metaphor for the structure of living things.

It began as an experiment in methodology -- in creatively conciliating the specificity of a media-archaeological approach with a narrative of broad cultural change -- but evolved into an associative journey through plant-animal-book hybrids.

The web-based review process is set up to be open-ended (you can read more about it here); all are welcome to leave comments and critiques. In fact, please do! I can think of few better uses for technology than to facilitate communication across previously insurmountable barriers.

*I wrote and rewrote this sentence a dozen times. Does one put an essay "up for" or "under" public review? Is the essay "at" or "on" the review site? Our prepositions haven't gelled for this process yet. If you're confused, visit the site I linked and you'll get the idea.

Acosta's Cubist Woodcuts

I've been looking at a lot of sixteenth-century herbals (loosely defined) lately. To me, this is one of the most beautiful: Cristobal Acosta's Tractado de las Drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales ... (1578). The images transform the typical leafy, full-bloom plants of contemporaneous herbals into cubist woodcuts, bizarrely static and yet vibrating with unexpected, emergent patterns.

I've grabbed a few of my favorites here from the Biblioteca Digital del Real Jardin Botanico. Enjoy.