In How Writing Made Us Human, 3000 BCE to Now (JHU Press, 2023), Walter Stephens condenses the massive history of the written word into an accessible, engaging narrative. The history of writing is not merely a record of technical innovations—from hieroglyphics to computers—but something far richer: a chronicle of emotional engagement with written culture whose long arc intimates why the humanities are crucial to society.

This event is co-sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

Speakers

Walter Stephens is the Charles S. Singleton Professor of Italian Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, co-editor of MLN Italian, and founder of Great Books at Hopkins for undergraduates. His teaching and research explore the relation of medieval and Renaissance literature to theology, witchcraft, literary forgery, and the history of scholarship. He has been a visiting professor of Italian at Yale University (2012) and the Université François Rabelais in Tours, France (2008), and has taught a faculty seminar on “Writing and Wonder” at the Folger Institute (2008). He has been a visiting fellow at the Oxford University colleges of All Souls (2004–05) and Christ Church (2009), at the Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Durham, U.K. (2012), and at the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in the Oriental Institute of Oxford University (2014). He served as a co-curator of the 2014 rare book exhibition of the Bibliotheca Fictiva collection and accompanying catalogue, Fakes, Lies, and Forgeries.

In addition to Stephens, the roundtable will include Ann Blair, the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard University, Anthony Grafton, the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, and Earle Havens, the Nancy H. Hall Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts and director of the Stern Center at the Sheridan Libraries. The discussion will be moderated by Chris Celenza, dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

The Virginia Fox Stern Center for the History of the Book in the Renaissance was established with a permanent endowment in 2017 to support lectures, fellowships, master classes, symposia, and publications related to the Sheridan Libraries' premodern and early modern rare book and manuscript collections. The center’s focus encompasses the historical reception of classical and medieval thought and the culture and influence of the Renaissance throughout the early modern period.

For additional information email sterncenter@jhu.edu.