Book Launch: "How Writing Made us Human, 3000 BCE to Now"

Description

Please join a book launch and round table discussion celebrating Walter Stephens' How Writing Made Us Human, 3000 BCE to Now, hosted by the Virginia Fox Stern Center for the History of the Book in the Renaissance and co-sponsored by Johns Hopkins University Press.

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.

Round table discussants:

• Walter Stephens, professor emeritus in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures Italian Program at Johns Hopkins University
• Ann Blair, professor of history at Harvard University
• Anthony Grafton, professor of history at Princeton University
• Earle Havens, director of the Stern Center and curator of rare books and manuscripts at Johns Hopkins University
• Christopher Celenza, dean of the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences (chair)

Find all Stern Center events.