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HL90 Prospective Syllabus

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HL90 Prospective Syllabus Wired In: Computers and Post-45 American Culture History & Literature 90, Harvard University Instructor: J. Schnepf Course Description This course explores digital culture in the United States after 1945. In the span of only a few decades, the role of computers in society dramatically transformed from a complicated tool serving bureaucratic and militaristic aims during World War II to a children’s toy found in the domestic space of the American home by the 1980s. Against this backdrop, we will draw on a diverse set of cultural sources ranging from classic midcentury novels by Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon, to Looney Tunes cartoons and DC Comics to examine the many ways these digital devices help us think about labor, gender, sexuality, and national identity in the information age. Course Requirements and Breakdown of Grades Research Scavenger Hunt* 5 Close-Reading Short Essay 15 Final Essay Proposal* 5 Show and Tell Assignment* 5 Final Essay Draft* 10 Final Essay 35 Participation 25 *You will receive full marks for completing the Research Scavenger Hunt, Show and Tell Assignment, Final Essay Proposal, and Final Essay Draft 1 Course Schedule Week 1 Computers Before Computers In class Look up definitions of “Computer” in the Oxford English Dictionary Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, “Notes,” October 1842 Alan Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” MIND, October 1950 View The Machine that Changed the World, Part I (1992, documentary film) Week 2 Building a Better Brain: Harvard’s History of Computers To read and view for class today Kurt Vonnegut, The Player Piano (1952), Chapter 1 - 18 “Robot Works Problems Never Before Solved,” Popular Mechanics, October 1944 “The Thinking Machine” Time. 23 January 1950 View “The Story of Mark I,” The Mark I Computer (chsi.harvard.edu) In class Class visit to Mark I (ASCC) Computer at Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments. Science Center, Harvard University. Week 3 The Problems of Postindustrial Society To read for class today Kurt Vonnegut, The Player Piano (1952), Chapter 19 - 35 Nobert Weiner, “Progress and Entropy,” “Organization as the Message,” The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. Week 4 Women’s Work and Office Automation To read and view for class today Angelica Gibbs, “Punch with Care,” The New Yorker 17 February 1940 View “Jean Bartik and the ENIAC Women,” Computer History Museum Channel, YouTube Marie Hicks, “Only the Clothes Changed: Women Operators in British Computing and Advertising, 1950-1970,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 32, 4 (October –December 2010), 2-14. In class View scenes from Desk Set (1957, film) View scenes from That Touch of Mink (1962, film) Assignment Due – Research Scavenger Hunt For this scavenger hunt your task is to track down and bring to class two different pictures. The first should be a historical photograph of a woman working at her actual job at a computer, encoder, or punch card system in the 1940s or 1950s. Collect any information you can on this worker: What is her name? What was her job title? What company did she work for? You might begin these searches with the ENIAC and Mark I since many women worked with these machines. The 2 second picture should be an advertisement from the same time period for a computer than features the image of a woman. Be prepared to answer what year the ad is from and what product featured. Week 5 Machines Smarter Than Men: The UNIVAC Computer on TV To read and listen to for class today “A Machine Makes a Monkey Out of Man,” Jacksonville Journal, 11 November 1952 “Unhappy Univac,” Washington Post, 8 November 1952 Edmund C. Berkeley, “Can Machines Think? What is a Mechanical Brain?” from Giant Brains or Machines that Think (1949) “The Night a Computer Predicted the Next President: All Tech Considered,” NPR, 31 October 2012 In class Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane Issue #24 – The Perfect Husband!, April 1961 View CBS Television Coverage of the 1952 Presidential Election View “Rocket Squad,” Looney Tunes, Warner Bros. 1956 View “To Hare is Human,” Looney Tunes, Warner Bros. 1956 Week 6 White-Collar Work and Postwar Suburban Families To read for class today Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road Elaine Tyler May, Chapter 1 “Containment at Home: Cold War, Warm Hearth” Homeward Bound Brian Rajski, “Writing Systems: Richard Yates, Remington Rand and the Univac” Contemporary Literature Week 7 A Computer in Every Store: IBM Commercializes the Computer To read for class today James Baldwin, “An Interview with James Baldwin,” Studs Terkel/1961. Conversations with James Baldwin. William Gaddis, “Treatment for a Motion Picture on ‘Software’,” prepared for IBM World Trade Corporation, The Rush for Second Place, 14-25 (1960) In class View The Machine that Changed the World, Part II. (1992, documentary film) Assignment Due: Close reading short essay Choose a single primary source (one cartoon, comic, movie scene, computer ad, or novel) and write a short essay (5-7 pages) that analyzes your selected text. Be sure to cite specific evidence, explain in detail something surprising or unusual about your text given what we’ve learned about computers so far. 3 Week 8 Integrated Circuits and Postmodern Fiction To read for class today Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 Kristen Haring, “Technical Change and Technical Culture,” Ham Radio’s Technical Culture. Week 9 Student Protests: Universities and the Tyranny of the Punch Card To read for class today Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man Steven Lubar, “‘Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate’: A Cultural History of the Punch Card” In class View The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969, Disney film) Writing Discussion: What is an Argument? Week 10 Personal Computers and Commune Culture To read for class today Stewart Brand, “SPACEWAR: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums,” Rolling Stone. 7 December 1972 Evgeny Morozov, “Making It: Pick up a Spot Welder and Join the Revolution,” The New Yorker. 13 January 2014 Fred Turner, “Introduction,’ and “The Shifting Politics of the Computational Metaphor,” Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (2006) In class Explore back issues of the Whole Earth Catalog (1968-1972) Assignment Due: Final Essay Proposal Choose a topic for your final essay. In your (1 page) proposal, first describe this topic using terms we’ve covered in class and explain what sorts of questions you have about the topic that you’d like to explore further in your essay. Then, name the primary and secondary sources that we’ve read together in class that you would like to write on. For each text that you list, explain what information it might offer your paper. Week 11 Xerox PARC and Child’s Play To read for class today Roland Barthes, “Toys,” Mythologies. “Children with an Alto computer,” (photo, c1970), (www.computerhistory.org/) Adele Goldberg and Alan Kay, “Personal Dynamic Computing,” Vol. 10, Issue 3 (1977) Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas (1980) 4 In class Visit to Lego Mindstorms at MIT Media Lab https://www.media.mit.edu/sponsorship/getting-value/collaborations/mindstorms Week 12 A Family’s Best Friend: Computers in the Home To read and view for class today Elliot, Amy-Mae. “16 Vintage Video Game Console Commercials [VIDEOS],” Mashable. 21 April 2011 (mashable.com) View “Video: The Evolution of 8-bit Art” and “Interactive Timeline of Game History,” The Video Game Revolution. (pbs.org) M. Ito, “Engineering Play: Children’s Software and the Productions of Everyday Life.” Anthropology. Assignment due: Show and tell Present one print ad or a television ad for a 1980s video game to the class and, in 5 minutes or less, explain how it was marketed to children, parents, or families by pointing to specific examples. Week 13 Writing Workshop Assignment due: Draft of Final Essay Bring two hard copies of your final essay draft to class today. Your draft should be a substantial amount of your final essay (8-10 pages). It should include all the elements required for your final essay including: engagement with secondary sources, an intervention in the critical conversation, a thesis statement, and close- reading of primary sources. Be prepared to point to aspects of your draft you’d like specific feedback on. In Class Peer Writing Workshop Week 14 Expanding Family Networks To read for class today Vindu Goel, “As Data Overflows Online, Researchers Grapple with Ethics,” The New York Times. 12 August, 2014 Adam D.I. Kramer, Jamie E. Guillory, and Jeffrey T. Hancock. “Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks.” PNAS. 17 June 2014 Duncan J. White, “Lessons Learned from the Facebook Study” The Chronicle of Higher Education. 9 July 2014 Assignment due: Final Essay Choose one of the topics we’ve covered in class. Write a final essay (10- 12 pages) that first explains how other writers have approached the topic. Offer your own argument and explain how your point differs from what’s been said. Be sure to offer a close reading of a single text to support your argument. 5 .
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