Lisa Gitelman
Biographic Data
| ID | 1467221 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lisa Gitelman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lisa |
| FAMILY NAME | Gitelman |
| SIGNATURE | GITELMAN L |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Material intelligence, or, knowing by hand
Studies in Shellac
Fact: the shellac disc — aka the 78 — was the dominant format for the circulation of sound recordings until it was eclipsed by vinyl — the LP —in the 1950s. Saying so seems obvious, indisputable. Yet within this commonplace lurks a bit of complexity. For one thing, every phonograph (aka gramophone) disc was made of many materials in addition to shellac, which made up only a portion of the whole. Somehow this one ingredient garnered synecdochical …
S usan A. C rane . Nothing Happened: A History
The opening pages of Susan A. Crane’s Nothing Happened make obligatory mention of Seinfeld, the 1990s television sitcom that was famously “about nothing.” But Homer’s Odyssey would make an even better text for the book that follows. Jerry and his TV pals are preoccupied with self-indulgent trivialities; Crane is after something far more profound. When cunning Odysseus tells the Cyclops that his name is Nobody, his Nobody naturally turns out to be…
Exit this way: Afterward
I wish I could say that when my colleague Paula McDowell approached me about having a McLuhan symposium at New York University that I had been supportive, or at least warily accepting in the practi
Popular Kinematics: Technical Knowing in the Age of Machines
The history of knowledge easily includes the history of science but has a harder time including the history of technology. Although the historical profession has productively explored how technology is knowledge, the framing of this equivalence can itself be historicized, and nineteenth-century analyses of machines offer one opportunity to do so. Taking popular illustrated representations of machine components-mechanisms-as its examples, this ess…
"Raw Data" Is an Oxymoron
Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents
Searching and Thinking About Searching JSTOR
Digital resources are helping to change the ways scholars and students work, but they must also be helping to shape the work that gets done. Taking JSTOR as an example, we might ask about the discursive power of the database. How is using an online resource for research acceding to unnoticed assumptions that underlie the construction of that resource
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Programmed Visions: Software and Memory
AHR Conversation: Historical Perspectives on the Circulation of Information
Modes and Codes
This chapter focuses on the complex mediations necessary to produce one of the most consequential events of the modern era: the invention of a new media technology. It tells the story of a chain of mediations, from F. B. Morse's first schemes for telegraphic writing and the several patents he registers and then defends, to the final decision of the Supreme Court. This story links successful implementation of the new medium with the notion of “del…
Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright
Reviewed by: Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright Lisa Gitelman (bio) Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright. By Lucas Hilderbrand. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009. Pp. xxiii+320. $89.95/$24.95. For readers who enjoyed or who may be interested in Joshua M. Greenberg's From Betamax to Blockbuster: Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on Video (2008), this book by Lucas Hilderbrand offers th…
Medium light: Revisiting Edisonian modernity
Americanizing the Movies and "Movie-Mad" Audiences, 1910-1914
Journal Article Americanizing the Movies and “Movie-Mad” Audiences, 1910–1914 Get access Americanizing the Movies and “Movie-Mad” Audiences, 1910–1914. By Abel Richard. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. xviii, 373 pp. Cloth, $65.00, isbn978-0-520-24742-0. Paper, $29.95, isbn978-0-520-24743-7.) Lisa Gitelman Lisa Gitelman Catholic University of AmericaWashington, D. C. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google…
Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture
In Always Already New, Lisa Gitelman explores the newness of new media while she asks what it means to do media history. Using the examples of early recorded sound and digital networks, Gitelman challenges readers to think about the ways that media work as the simultaneous subjects and instruments of historical inquiry. Presenting original case studies of Edison's first phonographs and the Pentagon's first distributed digital network, the ARPANET…
New Media, 1740–1915
Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890-1945 (review)
When Thomas Edison first recorded sound in 1877, he thought he had revolutionized business communications. Once improved, he was sure, his phonograph would become an automatic stenographer. Edison's adoring public believed him. As it turned out, inventor and public alike were stunningly wrong about the future of the phonograph. Amusement, not dictation, would be the primary function of recording, promoted by a whole new entertainment industry. Th…
Off the Record: The Technology and Culture of Sound Recording in America. David Morton
Scripts, grooves, and writing machines: Representing technology in the Edison era
"This is a richly imaginative study of machines for writing and reading at the end of the nineteenth century in America. Its aim is to explore writing and reading as culturally contingent experiences, and at the same time to broaden our view of the relationship between technology and textuality.". "At the book's heart is the proposition that technologies of inscription are materialized theories of language. Whether they failed (like Thomas Edison…
From Tinfoil to Stereo: The Acoustic Years of the Recording Industry, 1877-1929 . Walter L. Welch, Leah Brodbeck Stenzel Burt
AHR Conversation: Historical Perspectives on the Circulation of Information
Searching and Thinking About Searching JSTOR
Digital resources are helping to change the ways scholars and students work, but they must also be helping to shape the work that gets done. Taking JSTOR as an example, we might ask about the discursive power of the database. How is using an online resource for research acceding to unnoticed assumptions that underlie the construction of that resource
From Tinfoil to Stereo: The Acoustic Years of the Recording Industry, 1877-1929 . Walter L. Welch, Leah Brodbeck Stenzel Burt
Scripts, grooves, and writing machines: Representing technology in the Edison era
"This is a richly imaginative study of machines for writing and reading at the end of the nineteenth century in America. Its aim is to explore writing and reading as culturally contingent experiences, and at the same time to broaden our view of the relationship between technology and textuality.". "At the book's heart is the proposition that technologies of inscription are materialized theories of language. Whether they failed (like Thomas Edison…
Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890-1945 (review)
When Thomas Edison first recorded sound in 1877, he thought he had revolutionized business communications. Once improved, he was sure, his phonograph would become an automatic stenographer. Edison's adoring public believed him. As it turned out, inventor and public alike were stunningly wrong about the future of the phonograph. Amusement, not dictation, would be the primary function of recording, promoted by a whole new entertainment industry. Th…
Off the Record: The Technology and Culture of Sound Recording in America. David Morton
New Media, 1740–1915
Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture
In Always Already New, Lisa Gitelman explores the newness of new media while she asks what it means to do media history. Using the examples of early recorded sound and digital networks, Gitelman challenges readers to think about the ways that media work as the simultaneous subjects and instruments of historical inquiry. Presenting original case studies of Edison's first phonographs and the Pentagon's first distributed digital network, the ARPANET…
Americanizing the Movies and "Movie-Mad" Audiences, 1910-1914
Journal Article Americanizing the Movies and “Movie-Mad” Audiences, 1910–1914 Get access Americanizing the Movies and “Movie-Mad” Audiences, 1910–1914. By Abel Richard. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. xviii, 373 pp. Cloth, $65.00, isbn978-0-520-24742-0. Paper, $29.95, isbn978-0-520-24743-7.) Lisa Gitelman Lisa Gitelman Catholic University of AmericaWashington, D. C. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google…
Medium light: Revisiting Edisonian modernity
Modes and Codes
This chapter focuses on the complex mediations necessary to produce one of the most consequential events of the modern era: the invention of a new media technology. It tells the story of a chain of mediations, from F. B. Morse's first schemes for telegraphic writing and the several patents he registers and then defends, to the final decision of the Supreme Court. This story links successful implementation of the new medium with the notion of “del…
Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright
Reviewed by: Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright Lisa Gitelman (bio) Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright. By Lucas Hilderbrand. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009. Pp. xxiii+320. $89.95/$24.95. For readers who enjoyed or who may be interested in Joshua M. Greenberg's From Betamax to Blockbuster: Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on Video (2008), this book by Lucas Hilderbrand offers th…
AHR Conversation: Historical Perspectives on the Circulation of Information
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Programmed Visions: Software and Memory
Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents
Searching and Thinking About Searching JSTOR
Digital resources are helping to change the ways scholars and students work, but they must also be helping to shape the work that gets done. Taking JSTOR as an example, we might ask about the discursive power of the database. How is using an online resource for research acceding to unnoticed assumptions that underlie the construction of that resource
"Raw Data" Is an Oxymoron
Popular Kinematics: Technical Knowing in the Age of Machines
The history of knowledge easily includes the history of science but has a harder time including the history of technology. Although the historical profession has productively explored how technology is knowledge, the framing of this equivalence can itself be historicized, and nineteenth-century analyses of machines offer one opportunity to do so. Taking popular illustrated representations of machine components-mechanisms-as its examples, this ess…
S usan A. C rane . Nothing Happened: A History
The opening pages of Susan A. Crane’s Nothing Happened make obligatory mention of Seinfeld, the 1990s television sitcom that was famously “about nothing.” But Homer’s Odyssey would make an even better text for the book that follows. Jerry and his TV pals are preoccupied with self-indulgent trivialities; Crane is after something far more profound. When cunning Odysseus tells the Cyclops that his name is Nobody, his Nobody naturally turns out to be…
Exit this way: Afterward
I wish I could say that when my colleague Paula McDowell approached me about having a McLuhan symposium at New York University that I had been supportive, or at least warily accepting in the practi
Material intelligence, or, knowing by hand
Studies in Shellac
Fact: the shellac disc — aka the 78 — was the dominant format for the circulation of sound recordings until it was eclipsed by vinyl — the LP —in the 1950s. Saying so seems obvious, indisputable. Yet within this commonplace lurks a bit of complexity. For one thing, every phonograph (aka gramophone) disc was made of many materials in addition to shellac, which made up only a portion of the whole. Somehow this one ingredient garnered synecdochical …
Computer Science (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Art (8 works) · History (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Art history (6 works) · Media studies (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Law (4 works)