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Hi Victor and all, What your are complaining about is the reason why I insisted with my colleagues here at IADE that the courses "History of Design" and "Theory of Design" should be merged. Now we have a course called "History of the Theory of Design" in the undergraduate level. We placed specific histories of designto the master's level the - like "Furniture History" in the industrial production masters- and specific theoretical fields useful for design - like "Cognitive Ergonomics" in the visual design masters and we extinguished THE theory of Design or THE History of Design.. I understand your plea. Somehow, the responses to it were like a very elaborate IKEA instructions manual on how to start doing research/PhD/supervision. And this is good. I offer my talents to do the illustrations, as clear as IKEA's, I hope. And for the booklet cover I propose an illustration showing Rosan arriving to Mandalay with Ken as sir Lawrence Olivier or a sled named Endnote burning in Xanadu's furnaces. What I think you were asking for was for another thing, and I'll try to summarize it: What Victor was asking for was what is worthwhile reading. Not what you will end up putting in your reference list but those things so determinant, obvious and good that you shouldn't start any kind of research on Design without reading it. In fact, stuff so good that it might not even show up in a literature gathering about a specific research project. Fundamental (I would say) authors (instead of texts) that you/we should read to place you/us inside what design is considered for the possibility of design research. Best, Eduardo Corte-Real On 30-06-2011 3:52, Victor Margolin wrote: > Dear colleagues; > Much has been written on this list since my initial post a few days ago about literature and literacy. Ken amplified some of my points by discussing a field's need for a literature and the importance of knowing the literature and building on it. The discussion has moved to websites and programs to keep track of high volumes of reading material. The point I wish to return to is the function of core reading material in a field's development. In that spirit, I would like to distinguish between a list of resources and an intellectual history that locates texts in a framework of when they were written, what they responded to, how they addressed what came before them, what effect they had on what came after them, what other texts they relate to, when and where were these other texts produced. It is this intellectual history of design studies and design research that a good PhD program should provide so that a student can locate her or his own thinking within a trajectory, as I mentioned in my initial post. As to the gendering of texts, by first locating them within an intellectual history, one can expose the gender implications and patterns within which they exist. There are particular moments when women began to publish texts on design history or design and these moments have increased as many more women have entered the fields of design and design research. I am not a big fan of lists if the material on the lists has no context, no relation between the texts. The basic point of my initial post was to argue for a mapping of texts and issues as a way to orient old and new researchers so that thought in the design research field can develop as it has in other fields where such mapping has occurred. The point is not to collect resources but rather to know where and when they originated and why. > > > Victor Margolin > Professsor Emeritus of Design History > University of Illinois, Chicago > Department of Art History >