Readings

While some of the readings listed below can be printed out and read off line, many must be read in their original hypertextual environment. Readings that aren't available online will be passed out the first day of class. Extra copies are available on the front desk of room 2135 Taliaferro in a beige plastic file box with your instructor's name on it.

As of June 1st, only the readings through June 11th are set. Readings after that date are subject to change over the course of the semester.

DUE DATES	TOPIC	REQUIRED   READING	RECOMMENDED READING
June 1 in class 10-2 3140 Engineering (AT&T Teaching Theater)	Skills Needed for Distance Learning	Elizabeth Castro's HTML for the World Wide Web 4 available at most commercial bookstores.	If you'd like to experiment with more advanced web page design, there are numerous html, javascript, etc. tutorials available for free online. The Library of Congress's Internet Guides, Tutorials, and Training Information is a good place to start.
June 4	American Studies & the Web	The World Wide Web: A Very Short Personal History by Tim Berners-Lee Press FAQ by Tim Berners-Lee. You can skip over some of the more personal details of Berners-Lee life. Focus on the sections that discuss the past, present, and future of the Web. The Garden in the Machine: The Impact of American Studies on New Technologies This is a *key* essay for the semester. It briefly raises many of the issues we will explore more deeply over the course of the semester.	Michael Cowen, Does the Public Owe Humanities and American Studies Scholars Anything?" Explore the American Studies Crossroads Web Site
June 11 10 pm	Thinking About Hypertext	History of Hypertext Timeline As We May Think, by Vannevar Bush Read the article which spawned the idea of hypertext. Hypertext Terminology by Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin, robin. This is a very hypertextual document. Make sure you thoroughly explore the various definitions of hypertext, hyperbook, and their components Gaps, Maps and Perception: What Hypertext Readers (Don't) Do Rhetorics of the Web: Hyperreading and Critical Literacy EJournal, 6.3 (August 1996) Read the ENTIRE issue of the journal: Doug Brent's introduction, "E-Publishing and Hypertext Publishing;" Richard Anderson's feature essay, "Hypertext Notes;" and John December's and Charles Ess's short responses to Anderson. The Shadow of an InformandMake sure you spend at least a half an hour at this site but, you don't need to get through the entire piece	Hypertext The Rhetoric of Hypertext Hypertext and Hypermedia: A Select Bibliography
June 18 10 pm	History on the Web	Can You Do Serious History on the Web? Brave New World or Blind Alley? Pixeling Dixie by Amy Virshup Computers and the Practice of History: Where Are We? Where Are We Headed?" Archiving the Internet by Brewster Kahle Example History Sites The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War Spend enough time at this site to determine whether you agree or disagree with the claims Ayers makes for the site in his "Pixeling Dixie" interview The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory Spend enough time at this site to determine whether you agree or disagree with the curator's article, "Can You Do Serious History on the Web."	The Public History Resource Center The Center for History and New Media Electronic Theses and Dissertations in the Humanities Links to History "exhibits" on the Web as well as some reviews of these exhibits and interviews with their creators The Journal for MultiMedia History A list of other online journals of interest may be found at the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies by clicking "Featured Links" on the Menu.
June 18 10 pm	Evaluating History on the Web	Evaluating Web Resources Information Literacy: The Web is not an Encyclopedia Criteria for Evaluating Public History Web Sites Note: This essay is a work in progress but, it will give you a more historically oriented perspective on some of the issues involved in evaluating Web sites that produce history.
June 25 10 pm	Big Brother or Technodemocracy?	Democracy from Mark Surman's Wired Words: Utopia, Revolution and the History of Electronic Highways Denis Gaynor's Democracy in the Age of Information: A Reconception of the Public Sphere Spew by Neal Stephenson Disinformacracy from Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community Conceptions of the Public Sphere and Conceptions of the Public Sphere part II Falling Through the Net II: New Data on the Digital Divide Losing Ground Bit by Bit: Low-Income Communities in the Information Age Read through this report from the Benton Foundation	The Machine Stops, by E.M. Forster Read this speculative fiction classic (1909), strangely prescient in terms of issues of access to the Internet today. Access Denied: Information Policy and the Limits of Liberalism The Impact of the Internet on Popular Democracy in the United States, by Gabriel J. Gubash Cyber Democracy: Internet and the Public Sphere by Mark Poster Electronic Frontiers and Online Activists from Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 W3C Recommendation 5-May-1999 Native Networking: Telecommunications and Information Technology in Indian Country Click on link to Background and read the section entitle, "Cybersovereignty and Opportunities for Tribes." The section has the page numbers 15-19 written on it. Note: This document is in a PDF format. If you have never downloaded an Adobe Acrobat Reader, you must do so first in order to read this document. You may do so here
July 5 10 pm	Virtual Exhibition	Curating (on) the Web Make sure you thoroughly explore the links to various sites which the author discusses Class handout Carol Duncan's intro and chapter one from Civilizing Rituals A Survey of Characteristics and Patterns of Behavior in Visitors to a Museum Web Site In Search of Meaningful Events: Curatorial Algorithms and Malleable Aesthetics Spend a lot of time going through these three examples of virtual exhibition jodi.org The most highly acclaimed digital art site on the Web. The main link above will take you to the current exhibit OSS. Read a review of this exhibit here OSS has many links in it including a link to a large downloadable file here. I have not tried this file myself so it is not a requirement. In addition to visiting and reading about OSS, you should visit an older exhibit, 404.jodi.org and read a review of the piece here. Other links to jodi that you should visit include: day66 and a map to other sites on the Web, many of them similar to jodi and this early piece. Unfortunately, I could not get into the older jodi exhibits including my favorite, "Virtual Pigeons." So, you should read this Review to get a feel for some of jodi's older exhibits. National Gallery of Art Arguably the best of the virtual versions of physical museums that have gone online. Beyond Interface Think about the curatorial aspects of this exhibit of digital art. How is digital art being curated by Steve Dietz? Does he follow the formulas he lays out in his above article? Please explore this site completely.	Any papers from the 1997, 1998 or 1999 Museums and the Web conferences The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
July 9	Copyright and Fair Use	Revising Copyright Law for the Information Age by Jessica Litman The Copyright Grab NCC position statement on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. This will be e-mailed through the class reflector. United States Copyright Office, Library of Congress. Explore this site. Go to the Library of Congress' Search page for the 105th Congress and search under "bill and ammendment number" for H.R. 2281 This search will take you to a page where you will be given several options for more information. Click on "All Bill Summary and Status Info." Read this information. Pay close attention to the actual summary of the Bill.	Electronic Frontier Foundation Explore EFF's extensive archives on issues pertaining to the Internet and Online Free Speech. Intellectual Property and the National Information InfrastructureThis is the "white paper" which our other authors refer to. The Introduction, Background, and Recommendations sections are particularly interesting Fared Use -vs- Fair Use: The Impact of Automated Rights Management on Copyright's Fair Use Doctrine by Tom W. Bell Stanford University Library: Copyright and Fair Use UCLA Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy The Copyright Website

For more information contact Debra DeRuyver: dd131@umail.umd.edu, 301.305.0788
Department of American Studies, 2125 Taliaferro Hall, University of Maryland, College Park MD 20740
Last Updated May 28, 1999