Dr. Johanna Drucker: Inventing the Alphabet

The alphabet is our common writing system, but few pause to consider its origin or history. Remarkable as it may seem, this set of signs that developed in a cultural exchange among people in the Ancient Near East now undergirds the Internet and global systems of communication. Tracking the alphabet across its four-thousand-year history also provides a study in transmission of knowledge-through textual, visual, archaeological, and bibliographic sources. This talk addresses the ways the understanding of the alphabet has changed as these methods of knowledge production bring new evidence and arguments into focus.

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Thank you so much for posting this! I was one of the heartbroken turned away at the door day-of. Hooorayyyy!!