News Release — March 27, 2006

Dr. Janine Barchas presents "Technologies of Innovation: The Visual Exuberance of Eighteenth-Century Print Culture"

EVENT: Janine Barchas, associate professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin and author of the award-winning Cambridge study "Graphic Design, Print Culture, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel," addresses the graphic uniformity of eighteenth-century texts published in today's paperbacks and critical editions to ask whether they accurately convey the visual exuberance of the originals.

WHEN: 7 p.m., Thursday, April 6. Theater doors open 30 minutes prior to event.

WHERE: The Harry Ransom Center is on the corner of 21st and Guadalupe streets on The University of Texas at Austin campus.

BACKGROUND: The Ransom Center's current "Technologies of Writing" exhibition, on which Barchas served as a consultant to curators Elizabeth Garver and Kurt Heinzelman, forms an excellent background for Barchas' lecture. Both lecture and exhibit showcases a number of graphically innovative eighteenth-century works. Barchas raises questions about the roles of authors, printers, consumers and booksellers in the "making" of literature as she considers the impact of the rambunctious materiality of eighteenth-century books.

The Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Lecture was established to honor the Ransom Center's Carl and Lily Pforzheimer library, acquired in 1986. Carl H. Pforzheimer, a New York investment banker and bibliophile who died in 1947, formed the library from acquisitions he made primarily in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the world's most important collections of English literature, it comprises over 1,100 volumes and about 250 groups of letters and manuscripts that represent the foundations of English culture. Past speakers in the Pforzheimer Lecture series have included Anthony Hobson, author of "Great Libraries," Nicholas Basbanes, author of "A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books" and Paul Needham, Scheide Librarian at Princeton.