Stephen D. Houston from Brown University will present the Annual Grace Elizabeth Shallit Memorial Lecture, “Beyond Script: Notation and Memory at the Margins of Writing,” Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 3 p.m. in the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium at Brigham Young University.
Houston will address graphic systems of writing that encode and reflect speech. The lecture is sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, and all are welcome to attend.
“What lie outside conventional study are the graphic notations that do not clearly express speech — the notches, threads, scratches, potter's and mason's marks, the tally sticks of the Middle Ages and the Caribbean banana boat, all of which invade, trigger and mold memory through well-developed systems of meaning and practice,” said Houston.
His research interests include archaeology, cultural anthropology and Mayan writing and culture. He has edited or authored 14 books. He taught at Vanderbilt University for five years and BYU for 10 years. He is the Dupee Family Professor of Social Sciences at Brown University.
He received a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania as well as a master’s degree in philosophy and a doctorate in anthropology from Yale University.
For more information, contact Evie Forsyth at (801) 422-6108.
Writer: Angela Fischer
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