The Typographic Medium

An innovative examination of typography as a medium of communication rather than part of print or digital media. Typography is everywhere and yet widely unnoticed. When we read type, we fail to see type. In this book, Kate Brideau considers typography not as part of "print media" or "digital media" but as a medium of communication itself, able to transcend the life and death of particular technologies. Examining the contradiction between typographic form (often overlooked) and function (often overpowering), Brideau argues that typography is made up not of letters but of shapes, and that shape is existentially and technologically central to the typographic medium. After considering what constitutes typographic form, Brideau turns to typographic function and how it relates to form. Examining typography's role in both the neurological and psychological aspects of reading, she argues that typography's functions exceed reading; typographic forms communicate, but that communication is not limited to the content they carry. To understand to what extent the design and operations of the typographic medium affect the way we perceive information, Brideau warns, we must understand the medium's own operational logic, embodied in the full diversity of typographic forms. Brideau discusses a range of topics--from intellectual property protection for typefaces to Renaissance and Enlightenment ideal letterforms--and draws on a wide variety of theoretical work, including phenomenological ideas about comprehension, German media archaeology, and the media and communication theories of Vilém Flusser and others. Hand-drawn illustrations of typographic forms accompany the text.

An innovative examination of typography as a medium of communication rather than part of print or digital media. Typography is everywhere and yet widely unnoticed. When we read type, we fail to see type. In this book, Kate Brideau considers typography not as part of "print media" or "digital media" but as a medium of communication itself, able to transcend the life and death of particular technologies. Examining the contradiction between typographic form (often overlooked) and function (often overpowering), Brideau argues that typography is made up not of letters but of shapes, and that shape is existentially and technologically central to the typographic medium. After considering what constitutes typographic form, Brideau turns to typographic function and how it relates to form. Examining typography's role in both the neurological and psychological aspects of reading, she argues that typography's functions exceed reading; typographic forms communicate, but that communication is not limited to the content they carry. To understand to what extent the design and operations of the typographic medium affect the way we perceive information, Brideau warns, we must understand the medium's own operational logic, embodied in the full diversity of typographic forms. Brideau discusses a range of topics--from intellectual property protection for typefaces to Renaissance and Enlightenment ideal letterforms--and draws on a wide variety of theoretical work, including phenomenological ideas about comprehension, German media archaeology, and the media and communication theories of Vilém Flusser and others. Hand-drawn illustrations of typographic forms accompany the text.

The study of communication, language, and discourse is at once simple, elegant, and complex. Each of these areas is informed by "micro" subjective experiences of individuals and the "macro" processes of a culture. Communication itself is thoroughly modern yet it seeks anchorage in the traditions of the humanities and social sciences. All of this creates a significant challenge. In this monograph, Ellis considers the study of communication as he discusses three key issues in communication theory: (1) the growing emphasis on meaning, (2) the importance of a mediated culture, and (3) the links between micro communication activities and macro social categories such as ethnicity and social class. In response to these three issues, this book deals with the way people use language and communication to construct their world; this world is not constructed purely but is influenced by attitudes, ideologies, and biases. In the modern world the medium of communication has an impact on consciousness and society, and Ellis shows how the media are responsible for some of the fault lines in society. The book also explores principles of medium theory and documents the impact of media on psychological and sociological phenomena. Finally, work of Goffman, Giddens, and Randall Collins is extended to show how micro communication behaviors are implicated in and by social conditions. ADDITIONAL COPY FOR MAILER Expanded features: * The chapters work out a logic connecting real communication patterns with the broad principles upon which societies are explored. Thus the title "Crafting" Society--the crafting is purposefully active to indicate the dynamic processes involved in creating what we call society. Society and culture have their roots and empirical bases in communication; that is, in the daily struggles of interaction. * Two chapters on two of the most important and controversial issues of the day--ethnicity and class. These two chapters are clear illustrations of the new theoretical principles discussed throughout the book. * A chapter on social class is very unique for a book devoted to communication processes. Communication theorists do not usually write about class, even though it is a highly symbolic process and rooted in communication patterns. Class is a difficult concept in America since so few people, other than sociologists, care to talk about it. * A chapter on medium theory takes the bold step of experimenting a little by summarizing basic causal statements and propositions. This device underscores the goal of a theory which is to come to grips with testable statements. The focus is on medium theory and how the media influence consciousness and social structure. * A unique chapter takes up the issue of how communication processes are constitutive of social structures. It draws on work by Giddens and others to return to a concept of structure based on actions that produce and reproduce structure.

As form criticism arose, the French anthropologist Marcel Jousse developed a hermeneutical paradigm, global in scope and prescient in its vision but opposed to the philological paradigm of biblical studies. While the philological methodology came to define modernity's biblical hermeneutics, Jousse's rhythmically energized paradigm was marginalized and largely forgotten. Although Jousse has left relatively few traces in writing, many of his more than one thousand lectures, delivered at four different academic institutions in Paris between 1931 and 1957, have been edited and translated into English by Edgard Sienaert. The Forgotten Compass surveys Jousse's views on biblical tradition and scholarship, documenting the relevance of his paradigm for current biblical studies. What distinguishes Jousse's paradigm is that it is firmly established within the orbit of ancient communications and deeply rooted in Jewish tradition. The Forgotten Compass challenges readers to come to appreciate the print Bible's lack of fluency in the very sensibilities privileged by Jousse's paradigm and to raise consciousness about the multivocal, multisensory culture in which the biblical traditions emerged and from which they drew their initial nourishment.

Jesus and his followers defined their allegiances and expressed their identities in a communications culture that manifested itself in voice and chirographic practices, in oral-scribal interfaces, and in performative activities rooted in memory. In the sixteen essays gathered in Imprints, Voiceprints, and Footprints of Memory, Werner Kelber explores the verbal arts of early Christian word processing operative in a media world that was separated by two millennia from our contemporary media history. The title articulates the fact that the ancient culture of voiced texts, hand-copying, and remembering is chiefly accessible to us in print format and predominantly assimilated from print perspectives. The oral-scribal-memorial-performative paradigm developed in these essays challenges the reigning historical-critical model in biblical scholarship. Notions of tradition, the fixation on the single original saying, the dominant methodology of form criticism, and the heroic labors of the Quest—stalwart features of the historical, documentary paradigm—are all subject to a critical review. A number of essays reach beyond New Testament texts, ranging from the pre-Socratic Gorgias through medieval manuscript culture on to print’s triumphant apotheosis in Gutenberg’s Vulgate, product of the high tech of the fifteenth century, all the way to conflicting commemorations of Auschwitz—taking tentative steps toward a history of media technologies, culture, and cognition of the Christian tradition in the West.

Niebisch retraces how the early Avant-Garde movements started out as parasites inhabiting and irritating the emerging mass media circuits of the press, cinema, and wired and wireless communication and how they aimed at creating a media ecology based on and inspired by technologies such as the radio and the photo cell.

This book honors the extraordinary contribution of Elizabeth Struthers Malbon to biblical studies. In the opening chapter, Werner Kelber places Malbon's work within the larger context of critical reflection, from antiquity to the modern era, on the role and function of discourse. Kelber locates Malbon's approach squarely within the framework of modernity and concludes that her "supremely creative achievement has been the employment of modern, narrative critical tools with a view toward uncovering the fecundity of the gospel of Mark.†? Drawing from and conversing with Professor Malbon's extensive publications, each of the five sections engages a theme from her works, focusing particularly on the Gospel of Mark. This tribute includes meaning as narrative, issues in methodology, studies in characterization, narrative readings of specific texts, and aesthetic and political readings. Contributors include: Werner H. Kelber; R. Alan Culpepper; Kelly R. Iverson; Mikeal C. Parsons; David Barr; David J.A. Clines; Robert C. Tannehill; J. Cheryl Exum; Heidi Hornik and Richard Walsh.