Anthropology 494: The Anthropology of Writing: Local Scripts, Colonial Contexts

Byron Hamann

Sections of Mesolore to be used

  • Ã’udzavui tutorials (all)
  • The full text of the Codex Nuttall
  • The full text of the Codex Selden
  • Position statements by: Boone, Schele, Marcus, Pohl, Sanders in Debates, “History vs Propaganda?”

How these sections of Mesolore will be used

“The Anthropology of Writing” is divided into four units; three are covered in the first half of the class. “Alphabets and Hieroglyphs” introduces students to some of the exotic features of the Mediterranean alphabet and its uses from the ancient world to the present. “Speech, Writing, Gesture” covers topics on theories of communication. “Colonialism” briefly considers the ways writing has been studied in colonial situations from the 16th to the 19th century. Then, in the second half of the class, is the fourth unit, in which we focus on three case studies of indigenous writing systems in the Americas both before and after the conquest: Maya, Mixtec, and Andean. Mesolore will be used for 2 and a half weeks during the “Mixtec” section of the course. Four class sessions in this period focus on Mixtec writing, the fifth class session summarizes the Maya and Mixtec portions of the class by exploring debates on the role of “propoganda” in Mesoamerican writing.
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The first class session will be an introduction to the Mixtec writing system; students will read a series of Tutorials (The Mixteca and its people, Images of action, Painted landscapes, Keeping time, The Mixtec body, and Colored Lyrics) before class, and in class a Socratic-style discussion will make sure that the students have learned the basics of how Mixtec writing communicates. For example, the professor may want to take a page from either the Codex Nuttall (perhaps 20 or 26) or Codex Selden and analyze it step by step: go around the class, asking each student to identify the object or event pointed to. For example: What date does this glyph represent? What are the names of these two people? Which is the man/woman, and how can you tell? What does this picture (of a place sign, of two people getting married, of a warrior capturing another) represent, and why?. The professor should organize this Socratic discussion so that all of the basic themes covered in (at least) the Images of action, Painted landscapes, Keeping time, and The Mixtec body tutorials are covered. The goal of this class is to make sure that students are prepared to read the screenfolds on their own in the next class’ readings, and to undertake the basic documentary research of Assignments 1 and 2.
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The next three classes will then focus on discussions based on student readings of two Mixtec screenfolds. The second class of the Mixtec series will have students read the Codex Nuttall introductory tutorial, as well as the “Lady 3 Flint Story” on pages 1-21 of the Nuttall. The third class of the Mixtec series will have students read the Tilantongo-Teozacoalco genealogy section of the Nuttall, pages 22-35; students will hand in an assignment about using primary sources to think about history. The fourth class will comparatively consider how Mixtec writing changed with the arrival of the Europeans. Students will read the Codex Selden introductory tutorial, as well as pages 1-20 of the Selden, and will hand in another assignment comparing one aspect of pre- and post-contact Mixtec writing.
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Then, before moving from Mesoamerica to the Andes, a class on “History or Propaganda” will consider recent debates in Mesoamerican scholarship over the value and trustworthiness of indigenous historical records. Since students will have already studied pre- and post-conquest Maya writing before they covered the Mixtec material, this class on “History or Propaganda” will allow them to reflect on what they have learned about Maya and Mixtec writing, and will also introduce comparative information on the Aztec script. In addition to reading a critical review by Michael Coe (whose Reading the Maya Hieroglyphs students will have already read) of Joyce Marcus’ Mesoamerican Writing Systems (selections of which will also be assigned), students will use Mesolore to hear a range of perspectives, from scholars in a number of disciplines, on the role of history and propaganda in our understanding of indigenous Mesoamerican texts.

What are the general pedagogic benefits of this use of Mesolore?

One of the goals in planning this class was to devote equal time to Western academic theories of writing and communication as to careful investigations of how particular writing systems communicated information, and how the nature of that communication changed with colonization. The Mixtec material in Mesolore allows students to grasp the details of an indigenous writing system, and to read a “bilingual” (English-pictorial) translation of complete Mixtec narratives, a degree of exposure to primary-source narratives that is impossible with Maya hieroglyphs or Andean khipu. Readings for all three of the case studies (Maya, Mixtec, Andean) have been chosen because they should allow students to recognize both continuities and disjunctures in pre- and post-colonization techniques of writing. Comparison of the Codex Nuttall and Codex Selden reveals continuities (basic genealogical concerns and representational techniques remain) and changes (coloration, costume, gesture, and face-paint are all radically simplified in the colonial-era Selden; the Selden drops representations of sacrifices and indigenous temples from its more “recent” history in its last pages, and includes a vastly expanded number of representations of the bundled dead in this more recent history). Comparative class discussion of the Nuttall and Selden will help students think about persistence and change in colonial situations.
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The use of the Debates in class has a number of purposes. First, in combination with readings by Coe and Marcus, it will allow students to gain another perspective on scholars whose work they are already familiar with. In addition, it will introduce students to a much wider range of perspectives on how the contents of Maya and Mixtec writing (which students have spent the past month learning about) have been variously interpreted by scholars. Hopefully, students will also be able to use their knowledge of Mixtec and Maya scripts to support, or critique, the different positions they encounter on Mesolore. Theuse of the Debates will expose students to a number of perspectives from several different disciplines on the interpretation of Mesoamerican texts. More generally, the use of Debates will remind students of the role of argument and disagreement in the academic production of knowledge’“and not just remind students of this: present them with a context of debate for which they are familiar with the primary sources involved, and from which they can make their own evaluations of scholarly claims.

Specific assignments and their pedagogic benefits

Assignment #1 (Thursday April 8/ Class # X)’”“Primary sources and the Mixtec vision of the past”

Preparation
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In previous classes, students will have read the following sections of Mesolore:

Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Mesoamerican Screenfolds”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Life in the Rain Place”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Images of Action”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Painted Landscapes”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Keeping Time”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “The Ã’udzavui Body”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Colored Lyrics”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Introduction: The Codex Nuttall”
Ã’udzavui documents: The Codex Nuttall pages 14-22 and pages 23-35.

See syllabi and course description for suggestions on how to prepare students leading up to this assignment.
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Assignment: Handout text
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This assignment asks you to think about basic issues involved in historical research, and about the use of primary sources to understand the past. For the next class you will prepare a 3 page essay addressing two issues:

  • What are things that were important to Mixtec elites in writing their histories?
  • What are things that were not important to Mixtec elites in writing their histories?

The “Tutorials” on the Ã’udzavui (Mixtec) screenfolds in Mesolore (which you have read for previous classes) already discuss some of the similarities and differences between modern history in the West and Mixtec history in the 15th and 16th centuries. This assignment asks you to draw conclusions about Mixtec ideas of history from your reading of two sections of the Codex Nuttall, and to illustrate your arguments by making reference to specific images/events in these sections.
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Your essay will be organized around three position statements, listed in your opening paragraph. Two of these position statements will address topics that were important to Mixtecs in writing their histories, and the third will address a topic not included in Mixtec histories. You will then use the remainder of your essay to support these claims by making specific references to images and events in pages 14-35 of the Codex Nuttall.
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In addition to preparing these essays for the start of class, in class I will draw the names of 3-4 students who will be asked to read their essays to the class, and use the copy of Mesolore set up for projection in class to illustrate their arguments. Students (and professor) will not know who will be chosen to present before class begins, so everyone is expected to be prepared to present their ideas.
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Sample position statements might include:

  • “The Mixtecs felt the actions of divine beings were an important part of their histories”
  • “Women played an important role in Mixtec historical writing”
  • “Although Mixtecs possesed a calendrical system, the even, regularized dating of events in Mixtec histories does not seem to be important”
  • “The depiction of children was not important in Mixtec historical writing”

When thinking of your position statements, and when searching for evidence to support them, you should consider the ways in which your evidence is distributed across the 23 pages of the Nuttall your are studying, and how this distribution may relate to the “foundation narrative” on pages 14-22 in contrast to the “genealogy” section on pages 23-35. So, for example, do you find that your evidence is coming from one section or the other ? Or do the two different sections answer your question in different ways? Or not? (Any of these contrasts may say something important about how these two different genres of history were written)? Students may also choose to make their position statements in a way that contrasts these two sections of the Nuttall. For example:

  • “Depictions of Landscape are important in Foundation Narratives, but are not important in Genealogies.”

You will support your arguments with specific references to events in the Codex Nuttall. For example “…supporting my argument is an image on page 14, which depicts…” or “…supporting my argument is the number of depictions women on 14-22 as contrasted with the number of depictions of women on pages 23-35…”
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As a final tip, note that counting is often an effective way to convey an argument. For example, if you want to claim that women were important part of how Mixtecs wrote their histories, you should count the numbers of women depicted in comparison to men. But, of course, numbers can’t tell everything: what are women (versus men) shown doing in these histories, and how might that information support, or contradict, a simple numeric tally? Or how is the number of women compared to men different, or similar, in the “foundation narrative” versus “genealogy” sections of the Nuttall that you have been asked to read?
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Pedagogic Benefits
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This assignment will encourage students to engage in research with primary sources, and to learn how to move from patterns observed in historical texts to conclusions based on those patterns. It will also teach students to think in very concrete ways about what topics were important to Mixtec elite society and its self-perception, and how that view of history differs from, or is similar to, common sense ideas about what history is in the 21st century West.

Assignment #2 (Tuesday April 13/ Class # X)’”“Colonization and transformation in Mixtec writing”

Preparation
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In previous classes, students will have read the following sections of Mesolore:

Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Mesoamerican Screenfolds”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Life in the Rain Place”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Images of Action”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Painted Landscapes”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Keeping Time”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “The Mixtec Body”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Colored Lyrics”
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Introduction: The Codex Nuttall”
Ã’udzavui documents: The Codex Nuttall
Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Introduction to the Codex Selden”
Ã’udzavui documents: The Codex Selden pages 1-20.

See syllabi and course description for suggestions on how to prepare students leading up to this assignment.
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Assignment: Handout text
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This assignment asks you to use primary sources to study, in a very concrete way, how Mixtec writing both changed and remained the same before and after the arrival of the Europeans. You will write a 3 page essay which focuses on one aspect of Mixtec codical art, and compares how that aspect changes, and stays the same, in the Codex Nuttall (a pre-conquest document) and the Codex Selden (a post-conquest document). Since 23 pages from the Codex Nuttall, and 20 pages from the Codex Selden, are included in Mesolore, you will be analyzing roughtly equal “sample sizes” from each codex.
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In addition to preparing these essays for the start of class, in class I will draw the names of 3-4 students who will be asked to read their essays to the class, and use the copy of Mesolore set up for projection in class to illustrate their arguments. Students (and professor) will not know who will be chosen to present before class begins, so everyone is expected to be prepared to present their ideas.
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For example, a you may decide to study the depictions of women’s clothing. What are the features of this clothing before the conquest, as depicted in the Codex Nuttall? How many different kinds of garments are worn? What are the colors and styles of these garments? Then, compare your observations on women’s garments in the Nuttall to the appearance of women’s garments in the Selden. What has changed? What has stayed the same?
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Another topic might address the appearance of the dead in both screenfolds. Where do images of the bundled dead appear in the Codex Nuttall? In what contexts? Who are these people? Then, compare the patterns of the depiction of the dead in the Codex Nuttall with the patterns in the Codex Selden. How might these changes in representation relate to the colonial context (of Christianization, of mass death from plague, of the desire for Mixtec elites to maintain their position in a new colonial society) in which the Selden was painted?
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Yet another topic might be depictions of architecture in the two documents. What kinds of buildings appear in the Codex Nuttall? How are they distributed across pages 14-35 (that is, do some pages, or some sections of narrative, have more buildings than others?). How visually elaborate are these buildings? Then, compare these patterns with what can be seen in the Codex Selden. Do the same kinds of buildings appear? Do some sections of the Selden’s narrative have more buildings than others? How might these changes in representation relate to the colonial context (of Christianization, of mass death from plague, of the desire for Mixtec elites to maintain their position in a new colonial society) in which the Selden was painted?
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Women’s clothing, bundled dead, and buildings are simply three possible examples for comparison; others might include images of sacrifice, jewelry, face paint, weaponry…
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Pedagogic Benefits
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This assignment will encourage students to engage in research with primary sources, and to learn how to move from patterns observed in historical texts to conclusions based on those patterns. It will also teach students to think about the very concrete ways in which Mesoamerican writing was changed and endured in a colonial context.

Assignment #3 (Thursday April 15/ Class # X)’”“Debating Mesoamerican Writing: History or Propoganda”

Preparation
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Students will read/listen to the Mesolore Debate (Scholars section) on “History vs. Propaganda?”: comments by Boone, Schele, Marcus, Pohl, Sanders.
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This assignment is enhanced if students have already studied something about Mesoamerican writing earlier in the course’“such as the Ã’udzavui screenfold portions of Mesolore. See Section 2, above, for how this assignment fit into the teaching of “The Anthropology of Writing.”
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Assignment: handout text
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You will write a 3 page dialogue between two of the listed scholars presented in Mesolore’s “Debates/Descriptions: History or Propaganda?” You are to imagine what these two scholars might say to each other if they met, basing your dialogues on the position statements recorded on Mesolore as well as the source material about prehispanic and colonial era writing from Mesoamerica that you have already studied in the class. What might your two selected scholars agree on? What might they disagree about? You should be sure to support your dialogues with specific examples raised by the scholars in their interviews on Mesolore.
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Then, in class (after we discuss the readings from Coe and Marcus), the professor will begin with a survey: each student will be asked to list which two scholars they wrote about. These will be tallied on the blackboard. The professor will then ask a series of questions contrasting the views of different pairs of scholars on specific isuses. These pairs of questions will serve as the basis for class discussion and for integrating the writing students have done into class.
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Comparison suggestions
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Here are some examples of the types of comparisons the professor may wish to ask the class to comment on; students should also be encouraged to discuss the issues they focused on in their debtes.

  • What do Marcus, Boone, and Schele think about the conept of “propoganda?”
    Schele: all history is skewed, is “propoganda,” but that doesn’t mean it is totally invalid?
    Joyce: elites falsify texts for their current, elites write their histories in different ways for vertical vs horizontal propaganda; argues that history-propoganda dichotomy is not key to how indigenous elites thought about writing and truth, rather, the social class of the speaker is all-important
    Boone: propoganda as a really loaded term, so the question we need to ask is why different versions of story are told.
  • What do Marcus and Schele think about the role of writing in society and class relations?
    Marcus: on elite selfishness and presentist needs of the elites in shaping the constant rewriting of history
    Schele: on the mutual creation of society, symbols as a way to bind society together and to join different social classes
  • What do Marcus, Sanders, and Schele think of the relations between archaeology and epigraphy?
    Schele: on constantly changing interpretations of the archaeological record, the fact that only small part is seen, that you can’t find history in archaeology
    Marcus, Sanders: on using archaeological information to correct the “falsehoods” in texts

Pedagogic Benefit
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Overall, the goal of this assignment is to make students better aware of the sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic differences in scholarly opinion about the nature of Mesoamerican writing’“differences that may not be apparent just by listening to the debates once. Listening to or reading the Debates position statements will also introduce students to a wider range of perspectives on how the contents of Maya and Mixtec writing (which students have spent the past month learning about) have been variously interpreted by scholars from different academic disciplines. More generally, the use of Debates will remind students of the role of argument and disagreement in the academic production of knowledge’“and not just remind students of this, but present them with a context of debate for which they are familiar with the primary sources involved, and from which they can make their own evaluations of scholarly claims. Hopefully, students will be able to use their knowledge of Mixtec and Maya scripts to support, or critique, the different positions they encounter on Mesolore’“this is something the professor should raise at the end of class: having discussed what these scholars think about the question of “history and propoganda,” what do students think of these arguments? Whose are more (or less) compelling, and why?
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ANTH 494: Anthropology of Writing: Local Scripts, Colonial Contexts

Byron Hamann
Tuesdays and Thursdays

This seminar focuses on the anthropology of writing systems, paying particular attention to the interactions and transformations of different systems of writing in colonial contexts. Readings will include general theoretical texts on communication (spoken, written, gestural) as well as case studies of specific written traditions (alphabetic writing from the European and Islamic worlds, Mixtec and Maya hieroglyphs, Andean khipu).

Course Schedule

Tu. Jan. 13

Introduction

Part 1: Alphabets and Hieroglyphs

Th. Jan. 15

Masten n.d. (24pp)

Tu. Jan. 20

Fleming 2001 (Introduction, Ch1 “Graffiti,” Ch2 “Whitewash”) (69pp)

Th. Jan. 22

Garrod and Daneman 2003 (6pp)
Fisher 1976 (11pp)
Saenger 1997 Introduction (13 pp)

Tu. Jan. 27

Plato 2003 (70pp)

Th. Jan. 29

Hamann 2008. (68pp)

Part 2: Speech, Writing, Gesture

Tu. Feb. 3

Levi-Strauss 1955, Ch1, 5-6, 24-29 (107 pp)

Th. Feb. 5

BOOK REVIEWS DUE

In class watch Derrida (dir. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman, 2002, 85 min.)

Tu. Feb. 10

Derrida 1967 (39pp)

Th. Feb. 12

Bakhtin 1990 (40pp)

Tu. Feb. 17

Sacks 1989 Ch1 (pp1-36) (36pp)
in class watch Style Wars (dir. Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant, 1984; 67 min.)

Th. Feb. 19

Sacks 1989 Ch2 (pp. 37-123) (86pp)
in class watch Secret of the Wild Child (dir. Paula Apsell, 1994; 60 min)

Tu. Feb. 24

MOVIE COMMENTS DUE

Sacks 1989 Ch3 (pp125-159) (34pp).
In class discussion will consider Sacks 1989 as a whole, since the previous two classes have focused on films.

Part 3: Colonialism

Th. Feb. 26

Guha 1999, “Introduction” and Ch6 “Transmission” (74pp)

Tu. Mar. 2

Messick 1994 Ch12 “Spiral Texts” (19pp)
Surtz 2001 (22pp)

Th. Mar. 4

Rafael 1988, Preface to the paperback edition, Ch1 “The politics of translation,” Ch 2 “Thomas Pinpin and the shock of Castilian” (68pp)

Part 4: Three case studies: Maya, Mixtec, and Andean writing before and after colonization

Tu. Mar. 9

Coe and Van Stone 2001, Preface – Ch 6 (72 pp)

Th. Mar. 11

Coe and Van Stone 2001, Ch 7-12 (50 pp)

Tu. Mar. 16

Tedlock 1996, Preface, Introduction, Part 1, and Maya Poetics (pp15-74, 202-205; = 63pp)

Th. Mar. 18

GRAFFITI PROJECT PROPOSALS DUE

Tedlock 1996, Part 2 and Part 3 (pp 77-142; = 65pp)

Mar. 21-27

SPRING BREAK

Tu. Mar. 30

Tedlock 1996, Part 4 (pp145-198, = 53pp)

Th. Apr. 1

Mesolore, Ã’udzavui tutorials: “Mesoamerican Screenfolds”, “Life in the Rain Place”, “Images of Action”, “Painted Landscapes”, “Keeping Time, “The Mixtec Body”, “Colored Lyrics”

Tu. Apr. 6

Mesolore, Ã’udzavui tutorials, “Introduction to the Codex Nuttall”
Mesolore, Ã’udzavui documents, The Codex Nuttall, pages 14-22

Th. Apr. 8

Mesolore, Ã’udzavui documents, The Codex Nuttall” pages 23-35.

Assignment 1 due in class; be prepared to discuss your work.

Tu. Apr. 13

Bakewell and Hamann 2001: “Tutorials/Introduction: The Codex Selden”; The Codex Selden pages 1-20.

Assignment 2 due in class; be prepared to discuss your work.

Th. Apr. 15

Mesolore, Scholars section, Debate: “History vs. Propaganda,” position statements by Boone, Schele, Marcus, Pohl, Sanders;
Coe 1993 (2pp)
Marcus 1992: Table of Contents (vii), Ch1 (3-16), Ch5 (143-152).

Assignment 1 due in class; be prepared to discuss your work and the contrasting opinions of the scholars you have studied for today.

Tu. Apr. 20

Ascher and Ascher 1997 1-4 (80 pp)

Th. Apr. 22

Ascher and Ascher 1997 5-8 (85 pp)

Tu. Apr. 27

Urton 1998 (29pp)
Fossa 2000 (15pp)

Th. Apr. 29

Cummins 1998 (57pp)

GRAFFITI PROJECT DUE Th. MAY 6

Requirements

  • Class attendance and participation
  • Book Review Due Th. Feb. 5
  • Written comments on Style Wars and Secret of the Wild Child (5%) Due Tu. Feb. 24
  • Mesolore assignments 1, 2, and 3, due Th. Apr. 8, Tu. Apr. 13; Th. Apr. 15
  • Graffiti project: Proposal Due Th. Mar. 18; Final Project Due Th. May 6
  • Book Review

Students will read a book not on the course reading list and write a 3-4 page review of it. Reviews should follow the standard format for book reviews in academic journals: a heading with the title, author, place and date of publication, number of pages (both Roman-numerated introductory pages and Arabic numbered pages of main text), a brief summary of the book’s contents and argument (1-1.5 pages, double spaced), and a longer analysis of the book’s strengths and weaknesses (2.5-3 pages, double spaced). A sample book review will be discussed in class on Th. Jan. 15, and a list of possible books to review will also be handed out at that time. Students may also, with prior approval from Hamann, choose to review a writing-related film or art exhibition.

  • Comments on Style Wars and Secret of the Wild Child

On Tu. Feb. 17 and Th. Feb. 19 we will be watching two documentaries, Style Wars and Secret of the Wild Child. On Tu. Feb. 24, students will turn in short (1 page maximum, double spaced) comments on each of these film. These are to be informal responses to each film, and are only intended to encourage critical viewing and subsequent discussion.

  • Mesolore assignments

See above.

  • Graffiti project

The main project for this class will be to have each student document a focused example of graffiti in the city of Chicago. The spatial focus for this study may be a single building or room, a single surface (a particular table, a wall), a type of location (all of the newspaper vending machines in a particular block, all of the light poles in a single block), or a type of mark (a survey of the distribution of a particular tag, sticker, etc., in a defined area), etc. The “documentation” of this graffiti can take many forms: photos, drawings, rubbings (in the case of incised graffiti), etc. The goals of this project are, first, to make students aware of the richness of a usually-overlooked type of writing in a city environment, and second, to produce a record of an ephemeral type of public commentary.
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Students will be asked to turn in two things for this project.
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The first, due Th. Mar. 18, is a brief (1-2 pages, double spaced) project proposal. This proposal will discuss a) the type of graffiti and location that will be studied, b) the method of documenting this graffiti (will a particular location be studied over time? in one sitting? how will you survey an area?), c) the medium for documenting this graffiti (photos? drawings? rubbings?), and d) the reasons you are interested in the particular type/location of graffiti you have chosen to document.
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The second, due Th. May 6, will include both a written analysis as well as the documentation record (again, photos, drawings, rubbings, etc.) of the graffiti you studied. The written analysis will repeat in expanded form the topics discussed in the proposal (a-b-c-d), and provide an additional commentary reflecting on your experiences from the process of documenting this graffiti (did anything surprise you about the graffiti that you didn’t notice when you began the project? Are there interesting patterns or themes in the graffiti? How does the graffiti relate to the space in/on which it is located? Do these texts relate to, or challenge, any of the readings for the class?). The written analysis should be under 8 pages, double spaced
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Students will turn in two (2) copies of their final project: one for Hamann to keep, and another for him to return with comments. Students who do not want to receive commentary may turn in only one copy of their project.

Course Readings

  • Ascher, Marcia and Robert Ascher 1997 Mathematics of the Incas: Code of the Quipu. New York: Dover.
  • Bakewell, Liza and Byron Hamann. 2012. Mesolore (www.mesolore.org)
  • Bakhtin, Mikhail 1990 “The problem of speech genres.” In Speech genres and other late essays, 60-103. Austin: University of Texas Press.
  • Coe, Michael D. 1993 “Rewriting history.” Nature 362(22 April 1993):705-706.
  • Coe, Michael D. and Mark Van Stone 2001 Reading the Maya Glyphs. New York: Thames and Hudson.
  • Cummins, Tom 1998 “Let me see! Reading is for them: Colonial Andean images and objects “como es costumbre tener los caciques Señores.” In Native traditions in the postconquest world. 91-148 (57 pages)
  • Derrida, Jacques 1967 “The violence of the letter.” In Of Grammatology, 101-140. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.
  • Fisher, Dennis 1976 “Spatial factors in reading and search: the case for space.” In Eye movements and psychological process, edited by Richard Monty and John Senders, pp. 417-427. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  • Fleming, Juliet 2001 Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  • Fossa, Lydia 2000 “Two khipu, one narrative.” Ethnohistory 47(2): 453-468.
  • Garrod, Simon and Meredyth Daneman 2003 “Psychology of Reading.” In Encyclopedia of cognitive science, edited by Lynn Nadel, pp. 848-853. New York: Macmillan/Nature Publishing Corp.
  • Guha, Ranajit 1999 Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Hamann, Byron 2008 “How Maya Hieroglyphs Got Their Name: Egypt, Mexico, and China in Western Grammatology since the Fifteenth Century.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 152(1):1-68.
  • Levi-Strauss, Claude 1955 Tristes Tropiques. New York: Penguin.
  • Marcus, Joyce 1992 Mesoamerican writing systems. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Masten, Jeffrey n.d. “On Q.” Manuscript.
  • Messick, Brinkley The Calligraphic State. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Plato (tr. Robin Wakefield) Phaedrus. Oxford: Oxford Press.
  • Rafael, Vicente Contracting Colonialism. Cornell University Press.
  • Sacks, Oliver 1989 Seeing Voices: A journey into the world of the deaf. Berkeley: University of California.
  • Saenger, Paul 1997 Space between Words: The origins of Silent reading. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Surtz, Ronald 1999 “Morisco Women, Written Texts, and the Valencia Inquisition.” Sixteenth Century Journal 32(2): 421-433.
  • Tedlock, Dennis 1996 Popol Vuh (2nd Edition). New York: Touchtstone.
  • Urton, Gary 1998 “From knots to narratives.” Ethnohistory 45(3): 409-38.

Anth 494 Book Review: Possible readings

This is simply a list of possible books to review. Reviews should follow the standard format for book reviews in academic journals: a heading with the title, author, place and date of publication, number of pages (both Roman-numerated introductory pages and Arabic numbered pages of main text), a brief summary of the book’s contents and argument (1-1.5 pages, double spaced), and a longer analysis of the book’s strengths and weaknesses (2.5-3 pages, double spaced). Students may also, with prior approval from Hamann, choose to review a writing-related film or art exhibition.

  • Bernstein, David J. 1987 The mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 272 pp. [account of textiles and writing after the 1066 Norman colonization of England]
  • Bierman, Irene 1998 Writing signs: the Fatimid public text. Berkeley: University of California Press. Xvi, 247 pp. [writing and space in medieval Cairo]
  • Boone, Elizabeth Hill and Walter Mignolo, editors 1994 Writing without words: alternative literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Durham: Duke University Press. Viii, 324 pp. [influential edited volume on New World writing systems]
  • Camille, Michael 1992 Image on the edge: the margins of medieval art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 174 pp [a study of medieval marginalia in writing, architecture, and urban form]
  • Clanchy, M. T. 1993 [1979] From memory to written record: England 1066-1307. Oxford: Blackwell. Xviii, 407 pp. [study of the shift from object-memory to writing in medieval England]
  • Coe, Michael Breaking the Maya code. New York: Thames and Hudson. 304 pp.[a history of the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs]
  • Eisenstein, Elizabeth 1983 The printing revolution in early modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Xiv, 300 pp. [overview of the impact of printing in Europe, ca. 1450-1700]
  • Ginzburg, Carlo 1980 The cheese and the worms. New York: Penguin Books. Xxvii, 177 pp. [study of the inquisition investigation of a literate miller in 16th century Italy]
  • Goldberg, Jonathan 1990 Writing matter: from the hands of the English Renaissance. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Xiv, 349 pp. [title is fairly self-explanatory; Goldberg is a big influence on Jeffrey Masten]
  • Quilter, Jeffrey and Gary Urton, editors 2002 Narrative threads: accounting and recounting in Andean khipu. Austin: University of Texas Press. Xix, 368 pp. [new edited volume with a number of different perspectives on Andean khipu]
  • Winchester, Simon 1999 The madman and the professor: a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. New York: Perennial. 272 pp. [novelistic account of that monument to 19th century philology, the OED]