What do Islamicate "occult" alphabets, Andean khipu boards, and the prayer writing system of Western Apache shaman and prophet Silas John have in common? Quite possibly more than first meets the eye! Read on, and come discuss on Tuesday via Zoom (10 am-12 pm Eastern US):

We have a really cool line up of articles for reading and discussion in our Tuesday session next week: an examination of rebus-renderings of the Heart Sutra in early modern Japan and an exploration of the special properties of scripts and alphabets in the Ottoman world:

Next week's installment of our Critical History of Communicative Technologies course promises to be an especially good one- we're looking at histories of introductions and uptakes of writing in early Japan and the colonial period Andes, with implications for Islamicate societies:

New post describing our revised second half of the semester reading list in critical history of communicative technologies, we added readings on Andean literacy and orality, Western Apache topics, rebus writing in early modern Japan, Ottoman talismans- some fun stuff! Link below:

How has print changed (or not!) our experience of texts, of communication, of our own inner states, and what happens when we bring in the (often previously left out) history of the Islamicate book to these questions? Link below to next week's reading guide: