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Knitting Code: A Tale of Two Very Different Disciplines

Recently I had the opportunity to sit-in on a lecture of Dr. Rebecca Nesvet’s for her class “The English Novel: 1850’s to the Present.” The reason why this lecture was particularly interesting was because it covered the topic of binary knitting, or knitting code – an idea of two very different disciplines fusing together. Professor Alison Gates, Chair of the Arts program and well-versed in the world of textiles, assisted in the lecture by discussing her knowledge about different types of knitting around the world and the commonalities between knitting and writing codes. A way that this can be done is by simply using a pattern between knitting and purling.

We have all heard a variation of the phrase “Knit one, purl two.” When it comes to knitting a code, it isn’t very different than using a pattern of ones and zeroes as we would for computer coding. Even more interesting that this strategy was discovered long before the first computer. How this ties together with Dr. Nesvet’s English Novels class is in the interest of Madame Defarge in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Madame Defarge was introduced as the wife of a shopkeeper, knitting in the corner, as that was a common activity for women of that time period to be doing. What was not immediately prevelant, however, was the fact that she was knitting code. As if the idea of an old woman knitting a secret cipher was not interesting enough, the message that she was knitting was what we would, by today’s standards, call a hit list.

Madame Defarge seated with her knitting in the wine shop.  Courtesy of Wikipedia / Fred Barnard

Madame Defarge seated with her knitting in the wine shop.
Courtesy of Wikipedia / Fred Barnard

The interest revolving around this topic has not been limited to just Dr. Nesvet’s class; here are some additional sources to look at:

Madam Defarges Cypher – Montgomery Bell

Steganographic Knitting – Sky Fish Knits

 

 

Great Books Discussions schedule Fall 2014!

Please come to the Brown County Central Library on the second Tuesday of the month at 6:30 p.m. The Great Book Discussions are held in the Board Room (2nd Floor).

September 9

Apocryphal New Testament

 

Professor Brian Sutton

October 14

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Professor Kevin Kain

November 11

Letters to a Young Poet and Selected Poems

Rainer Maria Rilke

Professor David Coury

December 9

Beloved

Toni Morrison

Professor Rebecca Meacham

Great Books Discussions: Schedule for Fall 2013

Please come to the Brown County Central Library on the second Tuesday of the month at 6:30 p.m. The Great Book Discussions are held in the Board Room (2nd Floor).

September 10

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

 

Luisa Etxenike

October 8

The Dream of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone

Ts’ao Hsueh-ch’in

Professor David Coury

November 12

Passing

Nella Larsen

Professor J. Vincent Lowery

December 10

The Blue Hour

Alonso Cueto

Professor Gabriel Saxton-Ruiz

Great Books Fall 2010

The Department of Humanistic Studies and the Brown County Library invite you to participate in the spring semester’s Great Books Discussion series.  On the second Tuesday of each month, a member of UW-Green Bay’s Humanitistc Studies faculty will lead a discussion on one of the “great books” of western and world culture.  The schedule for the fall semester 2010 is…

September 14, TOPIC: NATURAL LAW/RELIGION, Leviathan, Hobbe Chapters 6, 12 and 14, Presented by Professor Derek Jeffreys

October 12, TOPIC: UTOPIANISM, Utopia, Thomas More, Presented by Professor Kevin Kain

November 9, TOPIC: LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY, Open Veins of Latin America Presented by Professor Gabriel Saxton-Ruiz

December 14, TOPIC: RUSSIAN DRAMA, The Cherry Orchard, Chekov Presented by Professor Heidi Sherman

The discussions are free and open to the public.  Faculty, students, and community members are encouraged to attend.  Of course, we encourage you to read the “great book” before attending the discussion, but even if you cannot finish the work, you may find the session enlightening.

The Great Books Discussion series is held on the Lower Level of the Brown County Library (Central Branch – 515 Pine St., Downtown Green Bay).  Discussions begin at 6:30 p.m.

See you there!

Great Books Spring 2009

The Department of Humanistic Studies and the Brown County Library invite you to participate in the fall semester’s Great Books Discussion series.  On the second Tuesday of each month, a member of UW-Green Bay’s Humanitistc Studies faculty will lead a discussion on one of the “great books” of western and world culture.  The schedule for the spring semester 2009 is…

February 10
Shakepeare, The Tempest
(presented by Prof. Catherine Henze, English)

March 10
Leo Tolstoy,  A Prisoner in the Caucasus
(presented by Prof. Kevin Kain, History)

April 14
Hanan Al-Shayk, Women of Sand and Myrrh
(presented by Prof. Heidi Sherman, History)

May 12
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
(presented by Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society)

The discussions are free and open to the public.  Faculty, students, and community members are encouraged to attend.  Of course, we encourage you to read the “great book” before attending the discussion, but even if you cannot finish the work, you may find the session enlightening.

The Great Books Discussion series is held on the Lower Level of the Brown County Library (Central Branch – 515 Pine St., Downtown Green Bay).  Discussions begin at 6:30 p.m.

The Scarlet Letter

The fourth Great Books Discussion will be held Monday, December 15 at 6:30 p.m. on the lower level of the Brown County Library (Central Branch – 515 Pine St., Downtown Green Bay).

Professor Bryan Vescio will lead a discussion of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

Hawthorne’s best known novel is set in Puritan New England in 1620. Hester Prynne, a  awaiting her husband’s arrival from England, has an affair with the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. She gives birth to a daughter, but refuses to name the father.  Prynne is condemned as an adulterer and forced to wear the letter “A” on her clothing.  The novel’s  themes of adultery, guilt, and shame raise issues of importance in the contemporary world.

The discussions are free and open to the public.  Faculty, students, and community members are encouraged to attend.  Of course, we encourage you to read the “great book” before attending the discussion, but even if you cannot finish the work, you may find the session enlightening.

One Day on the Life of Ivan Denisovich

The third Great Books Discussion will be held Tuesday, November 11 at 6:30 p.m. on the lower level of the Brown Count Library (Central Branch – 515 Pine St., Downtown Green Bay).

Professor Kevin Kain will lead a discussion of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day on the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Solzhenitsyn’s novel depicts a typical day in a soviet gulag, one of Stalin’s labor camps, where Solzhenitsyn himself had served for eight years. Having escaped a Nazi Prisoner of War camp, Ivan Denisovich Shukov, returns to Russia only to be delcared a spy and sentenced to ten years in a labor camp. The book explores the oppression and dehumanization of Soviet labor camps and the means by which one survives such an ordeal.

The discussions are free and open to the public.  Faculty, students, and community members are encouraged to attend.  Of course, we encourage you to read the “great book” before attending the discussion, but even if you cannot finish the work, you may find the session enlightening.

On Civil Disobedience

The second Great Books Discussion will be held Tuesday, October 14, at 6:30 p.m. on the lower level of the Brown Count Library (Central Branch – 515 Pine St., Downtown Green Bay).

Professor David Voelker will lead a discussion of Henry David Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government”.

Professor Voelker’s brief intorduction to the essay and study questions are available at Ex Post Facto: Thoreau and Disobedience.

The text of Thoreau’s essay may be found at “Resistance to Civil Government”.

New Course: Great Works

Professor Coury is offering a special opportunity for Humanistic Studies majors (and minors if they like) to meet one of the requirements for the Humanistic Studies Major.  The requirement is to take either Hum Stud 350: Interdisciplinary Study of Great Works or Hum Stud 351: Interdisciplinary Themes in the Humanities, neither of which is offered very often, unfortunately.  Professor Coury has offered to direct an Independent Study (Hum Stud 498) that will meet the same requirements of Hum Stud 350.

The basic requirement of this opportunity is to attend and participate in the Great Books Discussion Group held once each month at the Brown County Library.  The list of books being discussed this semester and the individuals leading the discussion of those books is available here.

If you are interested, you should contact Professor Coury to work out the details of the Independent Study.  But, you need to do so immediately; the first discussion, with Professor Derek Jeffreys on Thomas Aquinas, will be held Tuesday, September 9.

New Book by Ganyard

Artur Mahraun and the Young German Order: An Alternative to National Socialism in Weimar Political Culture
by Clifton Greer Ganyard

Professor Ganyard’s book is the first monograph to devote itself to the ideology of the Young German Order, a right-wing nationalist organization during Germany’s Weimar Republic.  It affords a closer examination of the role ideas played in the development of Weimar political culture as charted through the ideological clash of the Young German Order and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party.

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