Tuesday, 18th March 2014, 7:00pm
Venue: Latimer Room, The Old Court, Clare College, Trinity Lane, Cambridge CB2 1TL
Language: English
Refreshments (wine, juice and nibbles) will be served after the talk.
Everyone is welcome!
About the Speaker:
Professor Simon Franklin has studied Russian history and culture of all periods, but he is particularly interested in mediaeval Rus’. In his research, he has explored the emergence of the earliest East Slav polity and the formation of a distinctive culture. test
Professor Franklin has also written on 19th- and 20th-century Russian literature. One of his current long-term projects is a cultural history of information technologies in Russia – he is now working on the volume covering the period c. 1450-1850.
Professor Simon Franklin’s major publications include:
National Identity in Russian Cuture (ed.) with Emma Widdis – Cambridge, 2004;
The Emergence of Rus, c. 750-1200 (with Jonathan Shepard) – London, 1996;
Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus c.950-1300 – Cambridge, 2002.
About the Talk:
“So many changes in the modern world are associated with developments in information technologies: changes in culture, in social and inter-personal relations, in the distribution and storage of data, in the possibilities for free expression – or, conversely, in techniques of surveillance and repression. These processes in the present seem so radically different from the past.
But is this really the case? The “digital revolution” is only the latest in a line of information technologies, whose social and cultural implications were also profound. What can we in the present learn from equivalent processes in the past?
And, conversely, how does our present experience help us to put new questions about history? In this talk I will look at Russia’s uses of, and interactions with, earlier technologies – especially writing and printing. The talk will be illustrated with slides of little-known, but highly significant, materials.”
