Geoffrey Nunberg to Speak in the Glasscock Center Digital Humanities Lecture Series

The Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research is pleased to announce this Spring’s first public lecture in the Digital Humanities Lecture Series. Geoffrey Nunberg, Professor at the School of Information at the University of Californina-Berkeley, will present his work entitled “The Phenomenology of Cyberspace; or, Should We Capitalize ‘the Web’?” at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, 8 March, 2007, in the Evans Library, Room 204E.

Nunberg presents a regular feature on language for the NPR show “Fresh Air” and chairs the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. He is also a senior researcher at Stanford University’s Center for the Study of Language and Information and a Consulting Full Professor of Linguistics. His recent publications include Talking Right (2006) and Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Confrontational Times (2005).

Describing his focus on the World Wide Web, Nunberg explains that, whether as "the public sphere" or "cyberspace," people always conceptualize the domain of public discourse in spatial terms. He points out how those spatializations rest ultimately on the material properties of the medium, both in the form of its artifacts (books or web pages, for example) or the means of diffusion. But, according to Nunberg, the metaphors can also shape misleading assumptions about discourse, in everything from the way we interpret Google rankings to our attitudes about the problems of online pornography.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, see our website http://glasscock.tamu.edu or contact the Glasscock Center at 979-845-8328.