notes 01.26.2009

assignments:

1. the page # of the most provocative thing in each book
2. be an architect, build a flexible memory theatre w/ at least 100 places
   

systems (idiosyncratic) for muses:

1. MS: 2CETmup
2. Sutte: garage to back bedroom
   
3. Tai: synagogue, sanctuary thereof
   

Method of loci
sacred <--> practical
the liberal arts: education proper to a freeman (Latin: liber) as opposed to a slave

* the Trivium
1. grammar
2. rhetoric
3. logic

* the Quadrivium
4. geometry
5. arithmetic
6. music
7. astronomy

or: G GRAMLAD

Cabinets of curiosities (Wunderkammer)
"encyclopedic collections, ... precursors to museums"
Bruno , burned at the stake as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition in 1600 (Hamlet in London)

More recent assessments, beginning with the pioneering work of Frances Yates, suggest that Bruno was deeply influenced by magical views of the universe inherited from Arab astrological magic, Neoplatonism and Renaissance Hermeticism.

The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci by Jonathan Spence
The Gallery of Memory by Lina Bolzoni
The Alphabet versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain

You Bet Your Life, 1950-61, Groucho Marx

notes 01.23.2009

TESTS: February 20 and April 8

Ivan Illych & Barry Sanders: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind
James J O’Donnell: Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace

Group 5: Traditions
Ben, Joan, Nick, Lynn, Zach
Dashboard > Layout>Add a gadget> Blog List
more at Chris's How to Create a Blog!

1. earliest memory
2. blog on passage in Ong
3. the mansion, palace, theatre of your mind
4. the 2 or 3 most memorable parts of Ong, Kane, & Yates
   

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A W A R E N E S S
the ability to pay close attention
defamiliarise the "ordinary"
poetry prose
every day is 9/11
what is memorable? what is sacred?
giving voice, flesh
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ...And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth." John 1

Ong p.79 Plato's Phaedrus

1. writing is inhuman
2. writing destroys memory
3. a written text is unresponsive
4. a wrtten text cannot defend itself
   

Chris's blog
Ben's cabin simulacrum
John's birthday
Kevin's Muses
Shannon's earliest memory
Sutter's renegade Scheherazade


She sang beyond the genius of the sea.

01.21.2009
Brandon
Chris
Erin
Helena
Jana
John
Rich
Sutter

MS: "People of the Screen"

Christine Rosen, senior editor of The New Atlantis, fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center:

The book is modernity’s quintessential technology — “a means of transportation through the space of experience, at the speed of a turning page,” as the poet Joseph Brodsky put it. But now that the rustle of the book’s turning page competes with the flicker of the screen’s twitching pixel, we must consider the possibility that the book may not be around much longer. If it isn’t—if we choose to replace the book—what will become of reading and the print culture it fostered? And what does it tell us about ourselves that we may soon retire this most remarkable, five-hundred-year-old technology?

... Every technology is both an expression of a culture and a potential transformer of it.

assignments #4, 5, 6

1. be an eavesdropper
2. fondle your books
3. look at our classroom
   

class overview

• two exams (100 points apiece)
• final (50 points)
• term paper, five page minimum (100 points)
• online journal (150 points)
• oral presentations, individual and collective (100 points)
• class attendance, quality of participation, miscellaneous (50 points)

"One of the key aims of this class is to have students engage rather than merely accept or assimilate information from sources."

Michael Sexson 2-283 Willson
office hours: M 1-5, WF 1-2
sexson@english.montana.edu

first few weeks

• Read chapters 1-3 In Ong, Prologue and chapter one in Kane, and chapter one in Yates
• Do internet research on terms, phrases and issues resulting from reading and discussion
• Set up your blog (online journal)
  

sample websites

http://rememory.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_archive.html
http://buttersickle-la-la.blogspot.com/

assignments #1, 2, 3

#1 memorise the Muses (and their mother :)
#2 find an unfrequented church
#3 what is the last thing you see before you sleep?

1. the book I am reading
2. my hand, reaching for the lamp when I wake later
   

1. the film I am watching
2. my hand, reaching for the remote when I wake later