Inventing the Alphabet: Technologies of Knowledge Production in the Humanities
A guest lecture by Johanna Drucker.
The alphabet emerged almost four millennia ago in the ancient Near East and now undergirds contemporary global communication. But the history of how we came to know about its origins and development offer a case study in the ways technologies of knowledge production construct their object of analysis. From classical texts to biblical debates, visual evidence and specimens, charts, graphs, antiquarian curiosities, to modern archaeology and epigraphy, the alphabet has been understood through a multiplicity of media. This talk gives an account of alphabet history but also, alphabet historiography, showing how radical shifts of time scale and evidence have changed our understanding of this crucial form of writing.
Johanna Drucker is Distinguished Professor and Breslauer Professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA. She is internationally known for her work in the history of graphic design, typography, experimental poetry, fine art, and digital humanities.
Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present
Johanna Drucker | July 2022 | University of Chicago Press
