Speaker Series | Paula Findlen and Dan Edelstein | “Mapping the Republic of Letters”
Paula Findlen and Dan Edelstein (Stanford University)
“Mapping the Republic of Letters”
Paula Findlen is Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History and Director of the Suppes Center for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at Stanford. She is the single-author (most recently) of the book Early Modern Things: Objects and their Histories, 1500-1800 (Routledge, 2012). Dan Edelstein is Professor of French at Stanford and his most recent book is The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (University of Chicago Press, 2010). At SM they will be presenting research from their new NEH-funded digital humanities project, “Mapping the Republic of Letters,” which examines networks of correspondence that stretched across countries and continents; the social networks created by scientific academies; and the physical networks brought about by travel. These networks were the lifelines of learning, from the age of Erasmus to the age of Franklin. They facilitated the dissemination and the criticism of ideas, the spread of political news, as well as the circulation of people and objects.
Co-sponsored with the Interacting with Print Research Group
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Arts W-215, 5:30 p.m. with reception immediately following