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The Evolution of the Book Launching the Year of the Book, the Penn Humanities Forum presents an exhibition and panel discussion on the history of books and writing surfaces in Rosenwald Gallery, at Van Pelt-Dietrich Library on Sunday, September 22. This special exhibition, which will be open from 2 to 5 p.m., offers an encyclopedic tour of the various surfaces humans have used to communicate meaning. The exhibition, Writing Surfaces: Matters of Texts will be on view in the Library until January 10. A panel of distinguished Penn faculty--Peter Stallybrass of English, Shane Butler of Classical Studies, and Millicent Marcus of Italian Studies--opens the exhibition with a discussion of what it means to call something a book, 2-4 p.m. The Penn Humanities Forum has dedicated its 2002-2003 lectures, seminars, and exhibitions to the topic of The Book, perhaps the greatest textual communications technology ever invented. Over much of the world, the Gutenberg Revolution changed the face of culture, its dominance holding for half a millennium. But now, with the emergence of strikingly new means of textual transmission, the era of the book appears to be over. At this moment of transition, we would do well to examine the complicated impact of the book, its influence on the electronic media that threaten to supersede it. --Penn Humanities Forum
Almanac, Vol. 49, No. 4, September 17, 2002 |
ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS: Tuesday,
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