Carleton’s 29th annual Davidson Dunton Research Lecture, Hanging By a Thread: Social Media and Literary Value in a London Field, August 1754 will be given by Paul Keen, professor and chair of the Department of English.

Keen’s talk will explore the ways that 18th century writers responded to the pressures and possibilities of their day by forging a vision of literature that spoke directly to the challenges at the heart of their experience of modernity. As people struggle to redefine many of the most fundamental cultural assumptions in a new information revolution, driven by rapidly changing technologies of writing, there is a lot to gain by considering the wit and insight with which these earlier writers responded to similar demands.

In an age when humanities teaching and research face unprecedented pressures, knowing more about the long history of this struggle to define what we do in the context of broader social and political dynamics has become more important than ever.

When: Tuesday, April 9, at 4:00 p.m. with reception to follow.
Where: Second Floor Conference Room, River Building, Carleton University
Registration: lisa_bullock@carleton.ca or 613-520-2600, ext. 8045
Admission: Free

About the Davidson Dunton Research Lecture
Established in 1983, the Davidson Dunton Research Lecture enables distinguished Carleton scholars to share their research findings with the academic community and the general public. The lecture is named for Carleton’s fourth and longest-serving president, A. Davidson Dunton, who led the university from 1958 to 1972.

About Paul Keen
Paul Keen is the author of Literature, Commerce, and the Spectacle of Modernity, 1750-1800 (Cambridge UP, 2012) and The Crisis of Literature in the 1790s: Print Culture and the Public Sphere (Cambridge UP, 1999). His edited books include The Radical Popular Press in Britain, 1817-1821 (Pickering & Chatto, 2003), Revolutions in Romantic Literature: An Anthology of Print Culture, 1780-1832 (Broadview Press, 2004), Bookish Histories: Books, Literature, and Commercial Modernity, 1700-1900 (with Ina Ferris, Palgrave, 2009) and The Age of Authors: An Anthology of Eighteenth Century Print Culture (Broadview, forthcoming 2013).

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For more information
Steven Reid
Media Relations Officer
Carleton University
(613) 520-2600, ext. 8718
(613) 240-3305
Steven_Reid3@Carleton.ca 

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