Elizabeth Andrews Bond, Associate Professor in the Department of History at Ohio State University, will discuss the major findings and digital humanities approaches in her book, The Writing Public. The first systematic study of letters to the editor published in France’s local newspapers, her work spans the two decades prior to and the first three years of the Revolution. As a work of digital humanities, The Writing Public is an investigation of the network of relationships from which new ideas emerged. Such letters were a form of early social media that fostered lively and ongoing conversations.

This talk will offer a fascinating glimpse into who participated in public discourse, what they most wanted to discuss, and how they shaped the formation of public opinion on the eve of the Revolution. The Writing Public prompts us to consider how Enlightenment studies is transformed by bringing a more capacious group of voices to the fore. It is an investigation of how newspapers had the potential to transform people’s reflections about their intellectual and social worlds, and in doing so, to modify the very nature of the conversation.

Please register in advance for this event.