主题：信号: 美国建国初期的沙普电报（Semaphores: The Chappe Telegraph in the Early Republic）
主讲人：Eric Wertheimer（亚利桑那州立大学教授、研究生院副院长）
时间：2016年6月15日（周三）下午13:30-15:30
地点：校本部C512
主办：246二四六香港资料大全、246二四六香港资料大全英语文学与文化研究中心
分类："语言文化与世界文明"系列讲座（三）
内容介绍：
我们读到的大多数文本都以清晰明了为目的，也就是说，在传达信息层面，词语组合被有序排列，以确保它可被明确定义，可被分解为基本语素，以消除理解上的歧义。现代广告业的广告语将此原则奉为圭臬——因为歧义会造成无法承担的损失。避免歧义的方法越来越多，歧义被消除得愈发彻底，这使得阐释备受轻视。坦率地说，这对从事人文学科的人来说是令人失望的，因为我们致力于破除惯常的视角与观念，而这些控制着大众的判断。现实情况是，我们生活的世界为各种指令和程序化的信息处理所覆盖，诸如数字代码、广告、恐惧驱动的破坏公物行为、新闻、战略公报等等。
这类信号生产的目的是将信息传递和理解转化为一种自动行为，用Paul Virilio 的话来说，就是通过消除绵延和距离实现时空的"殖民"。共时系统的文本，信息被缩微和加密，以简单方式传递，这使得传播速度越来越快。文本作为数据的起源，就是将机械印刷生产服务于国家利益的战略目的。这些信息的加密方法起源于近代，出现在18世纪战争技术现代化的进程中。
以1791年的沙普电报为例。它是一种视觉电报，不同于19世纪更为人所熟知的电报。它有一个钟面，但并不是用来显示时间，而是用来对应字母表。但即时效应仍是这种公开密报文本所追求的，在公开传输的路途中，需要在确保机密性的同时保证即时性。不到两年，法国人在沙普的视觉信号系统的基础上成功建成第一条电报线路，这对拿破仑首次全国性胜利功不可没。
在1790年代的美国，新媒体的即时效应带来了新的期冀，抑或是噩梦，它意味着以私下的强制方法来操纵公众和现代化进程中的国家。这些引发了焦虑，但无论是在大众媒体或精英杂志上都看不到将焦虑直接指认为危机的讨论。不过，对这一突破的关注很多，并产生了谈论信息、地理和政治的新方式。我们将对这种新型电报技术做出描述，在此基础上探讨阐释及空间压缩对于一个仍在适应印刷话语革命的世界又意味着什么。
主讲人简介：
埃里克·韦特海默教授主要研究文化史、诗歌以及数字人文课程与研究。1994年获得宾夕法尼亚大学英语专业博士学位，1996年起在亚利桑那州立大学任教，现任亚利桑那州立大学研究生院副院长、数字人文学院主任。
韦特海默教授发表的著作包括《美国保险诗学》（Underwriting: The Poetics of Insurance in America，斯坦福大学出版社，2006）、《想象的帝国》（Imagined Empires: Incas, Aztecs, the New World of American Literature, 1771-1876，剑桥大学出版社,1998)以及编著《创伤研究批评：理解日常生活中的暴力、冲突和矛盾》（Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict and Memory in Everyday Life ，纽约大学出版社，2016），在《美国文学》、《早期美国文学》、《十九世纪文学》、《加拿大美国研究》和《亚利桑那季刊》等学术期刊上发表多篇论文。韦特海默教授还发表了多首诗歌，其诗集《Mylar》于2012年出版。
Consider the Chappe telegraph of 1791. It was an optical telegraph (in contrast to the better known electric telegraph of the next century) that used the clock face not as an indicator of time, but as an analog for the alphabet. Still, the demands of temporal immediacy hangs over the methods of such crypto-public texts—how to communicate as instantaneously as possible, while maintaining codified secrecy over the open distance of the transmission. Barely two years later, the French had established the first working telegraph line, built upon the Chappe optical semaphore, and it was instrumental in Napoleon's first national triumph.
In the US of the 1790s, the anxiety produced by new media and their promise/nightmare of instantaneity--the ways in which private coercive methods affect mass publics and the modernizing nation--was not directly registered as a recognizable crisis, in either popular press or elite journals. But there was a great deal of notice taken of the breakthrough, generating in turn new ways of talking about information, geography, and politics. This paper will begin to describe the new telegraphic technologies and what the emergent interpretive and spatial compressions meant for a republican world still adjusting to the revolutions of print discourse.
Eric Wertheimer's diverse professional output includes writing cultural history and poetry, as well as exploring the curricular and research possibilities of the digital humanities. After earning a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994, Dr. Wertheimer joined the faculty at ASU in 1996. He is currently Associate Dean for Graduate Initiatives and faculty director of ASU's Digital Humanities Initiative.
Dr. Wertheimer is the author of Underwriting: The Poetics of Insurance in America, published by Stanford University Press and Imagined Empires: Incas, Aztecs, and the New World of American Literature, 1771-1876, (Cambridge University Press, 1998; paperback 2009). He has published articles on topics in early and nineteenth century American literature in American Literature, Early American Literature, Nineteenth Century Literature, The Canadian Review of American Studies, and Arizona Quarterly.
He is the founder and past Director of ASU's Center for Critical Inquiry and Cultural Studies and serves on the editorial board of Early American Literature; he is currently a member of the MLA Publications Committee. He recently co-edited a volume of essays, Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict and Memory in Everyday Life (NYU Press, 2016). He is PI on grants from the Mellon Foundation, the Luce Foundation, Science Foundation Arizona, and investigator on an NSF postdoc-centered grant.
Professor Wertheimer has published poetry in Exquisite Corpse, Tupelo Quarterly, Perihelion, Diagram, Shampoo, Adirondack Review, Muse Apprentice Guild, among other journals. His book of poetry, Mylar, was published by blazeVOX Press in 2012.
