The Department of History, University of Utah, hosts the O. Meredith Wilson Lecture in History on Thursday, September 19, 2013.

Harvard University professor Ann Blair is the guest lecturer. Dr. Blair’s specialty is early modern France, early modern European intellectual and cultural history; the history of the book, and the history of science. The title of her lecture is, “In the Workshop of the Mind: Methods of Collaboration in Early Modern Europe.”

Dr. Blair writes,  “Today we are well aware of the collaborative nature of intellectual work: the majority of scientific papers are co-authored; in the humanities interdisciplinary initiatives and digital methods of research have all encouraged collaboration. We generally have the sense that collaborative work is a recent development, that in the past scholarship was a solitary activity. Indeed in paintings and descriptions of the early modern period scholars were typically depicted working alone, but the working papers and letters that survive tell a different story. Through these sources we can appreciate how early moderns worked collaboratively through correspondence and in person, with peers, with patrons, and with helpers (amanuenses, students, family members). Collaborations worked differently in early modern Europe, and with different conceptions of credit and authority from ours today, but in this talk illustrated from early modern paintings, manuscripts, and printed books I will argue that collaboration was even more widespread and essential to scholarship than it is today.”

When: Thursday, September 19, 2013, 4:00PM

Where: Eccles Auditorium, Room 109, Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building (CTIHB), University of Utah