Yuri Rubinsky and Murray Maloney, SGML on the
Web: Small Steps beyond HTML
Gunter Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, Reading
Images: the Grammar of Visual Design
"TEI
Guidelines 2: A Gentle Introduction to SGML"
Lou Burnard
and C.M. Sperberg-McQueen,"TEI Lite: An
Introduction to Text Encoding for Interchange"
Lou Burnard,
The BNC Handbook: Exploring the British National Corpus with SARA
We will focus on artistic and scholarly uses of Markup Languages and Hypertext in the field of English Language and Literature. Some very high-powered software has recently become available for nominal cost for the Windows95/NT platform, so that it is now possible to do real hands-on work with SGML and the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), to work with SGML encoded powerful reference works like the British National Corpus and the OED, and to work with tools for converting texts of one format and medium into another (namely, DSSSL and JADE). So projects will range from preparing online electronic texts, the analysis and display of their language and structure, and the conversion of such documents into print. Each seminar member should plan to work with at least one document to carry through this process. This document should not be under copyright and may be the original work of the student. One of the products of this seminar will be a small archive.
In addition, we will focus on the criticism of online documents, which necessarily involves us with the semiotics of Web imagery. To develop some categories and ways of reading the net, we will use Kress and van Leeuwen's book as well as the books of Edward Tufte. Two topics I am currently interested in are
Note: The course will not focus on HTML writing
(the subject of English 481), but an ability to write some
HTML is more or less assumed, as is considerable experience
browsing the Web. Now is not too soon to start.