WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 6-7:30 p.m.

In this conversation about book history and the media revolution, scholars consider how current transformations in the production, circulation and consumption of books map onto earlier historical periods.

In debates today, books are sometimes represented as organic objects under threat from new media technologies and the reading practices these foster. But to what extent do such contrasts between an idealized past and threatening present hold up to scrutiny?

Co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française, Columbia University Libraries and Department of English

Panelists:

Jeffrey Freedman, Associate Professor of History, Yeshiva University and author of the recently released Books without Borders in Enlightenment Europe: French Cosmopolitanism and German Literary Markets (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

Carla Hesse, Dean of Social Sciences and Peder Sather Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley. She has edited and written many works, including The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern (Princeton University Press, 2003).

Richard John, Professor, Columbia Journalism School. He is notably the author of Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010).

Leah Price, Professor of English, Harvard University. She has published several works including, How to do Things with Books in Victorian Britain (Princeton University Press, 2012).

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