Signs of Writing: The Cultural, Social, and Linguistic Contexts of the World’s First Writing Systems
Free and open to the public.
Saturday, November 8 - Sunday, November 9
Regenstein Library, Room 122
1100 East 57th Street
Chicago, Illinois 60637
This is the first of three annual conferences to be held between 2014 and 2016 in connection with the Neubauer Collegium’s Signs of Writing Project. The topic of this year’s two-day conference is broadly writing and society. Bringing together scholars specializing in Chinese, Egyptian, Mesoamerican, and Mesopotamian writing and symbolic systems, as well as linguists focusing on written language, the conference will explore the contexts and processes of the invention of writing. Specific topics will include scribal transmission and education, the development of literacy, the materiality and archaeological contexts of writing, and the relationship between writing and the non-linguistic symbolic systems that preceded it.
Schedule of Events
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8
9:00 a.m. Coffee and Registration
9:45 a.m. Welcoming Remarks
10:00-11:30 a.m. Session One: On the Typology and Linguistics of Early Writing Systems
11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. Lunch
1:00-3:00 p.m. Session Two: At the Boundaries of Writing: Writing and Pre-Writing Interface
3:00-3:30 p.m. Coffee and Cookies
3:30-5:30 p.m. Session Three: The Media and Organization of Writing
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9
9:00 a.m. Coffee and Registration
9:30 a.m.-12:45 p.m. Session Four: Secondary Inventions, Adaptations, and the Evolution of Writing Systems
12:45-2:00 p.m. Lunch
2:00-5:30 p.m. Session Five: Contexts of Writing: State and Society
5:30-6:30 p.m. Discussion
