78902 - History of Reading: Objects, Criticisms and Publishing Contexts (LM)

Academic Year 2018/2019

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Semiotics (cod. 8886)

Learning outcomes

The aim of the course is to guide to a specific knowledge of peculiar understanding of the reading, with reference to the epistemic aspects and to its structures.

Course contents

The aim of the course is to guide to a specific knowledge of peculiar understanding of the reading, with reference to the epistemic aspects and to its structures.

PROGRAM/ CONTENTS

The Author and its rights

The program of the course will be divided into three parts 

A) During the first part the course is guiding through a specific understanding of peculiar and intentional awareness,, comprehension and transfer of cognition of book learning, with particular attention to the epistemic aspects , the historic plot, contemporary objects and forms sharable in the social network.

From the comprehension of viral transfer of ideas through the reading, to the rehabilitation of different way of the reading itself.

To avoid simplification concerning the ideological end of the book, it will be necessary to confront and study the historical and in particular the intellectual evolution of those epistemological and social categories and collective intentionality and social ontology (Searle) 

The main focus of teaching in this second part of the course is to get the students able of critical and historical movement inside the knowledge of encyclopaediae as well as encyclopedism (included digital ones) like metaphor of the order and symbol of the world.

B) A specific attention will be in the intellectual property on the editorial, ontological and historical juridical points of view.

Copyright of an author is an invention of the modern age, as a legal and moral prerogative of a subject (the author) whose identity and rights are enshrined and which is recognized as exclusive on the use and dissemination of the his own intellectual work, be it a novel, a symphony or a painting.

From issues of high strategies and UE recent debate about relationships between restrictions in the fields of publishing content on multichannel, media and supports, to the transfer of technologies to developing countries to those on digital identity, privacy until the abusive reprography of or downloading content from the web, today we are more and more often invested by the problems that concern the concept of intellectual property, well beyond the juridical field and starting from the relationships it establishes and from the nature of those peculiar entities and institutions that it defines and involves.

How did the patent, copyright and registered trademark system come into being? What are the objects of this type of property and what is their nature? How can the acquired rights be asserted, and is it still legitimate to base on a classical concept of (intellectual) property dematerialized and delocalized products like those that are now freely circulating in the world of the web?

What is piracy today, and is it still possible to establish a difference between copying and counterfeiting? Does it make sense in terms of analyzing a digital information models and its philosophy in a context of an ethics of reading that sholuld be essential characteristic of the infosphaera?

Starting from the redefinition that is situated in the context of an editorial and non-juridical conception of the concept of copyright and intellectual property, investigated through a comparison with its genesis and historical evolution from the traditions - the English, the French and the reflection developed in scope of the German philosophy -, the course aims to explore the scope of contemporary copyright according to a perspective of applied ontology; the lessons therefore include a series of historical cases and a perspective on contemporary theories on copyright, open source and creative commons and other forms of content sharing, in the liquid context of a publishing marked by the transition and hybridization between paper technology and digital technology.

The course will also examine the relationship between these new modes of circulation of ideas and information and the danger of new and more hidden strategies of censorship.

 

III). The third part will be devoted to a collective work of research on specific study cases unlighted during the course and organized as digital objects (blog, planning pages, problem solving regarding digital intellectual properties, papers. speech with the help of charts…) that eventually will become subject of final exams.

 

Readings/Bibliography

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Due to the experimental and innovative aspect of the course, tests of study will be selected accordingly to the different sudent’s needs during the course itself.

(Please students be advised that the bibliography will depend on the research conducted during the course and it will not be considered as bibliography for final exams)

Teaching methods

Lessons, workshops and conferences, multimedia lessons, readings of paper, visit to publishing houses and multimedia labs. 

Assessment methods

Papers, charts, blog and digital objects design.

Teaching tools

Multimedia reference, websites, digital encyclopedias and sources, books and papers (hard and liquid).

Office hours

See the website of Riccardo Fedriga