David Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Institute for World Literature at Harvard University, will deliver the Tanner Lecture on Human Values on Wednesday, April 9 at 7 p.m. at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, 410 Campus Center Drive.

His lecture, “A Rune of One’s Own: Writing Systems and Cultural Memory,” will discuss the interplay of different writing systems in times of historical change, such as the Christianization of Iceland in the year 1000.

Founded by Grace and Obert Tanner in the mid-1970s, the Tanner Lectures on Human Values are dedicated to enriching the intellectual and moral life of humankind. Annual Tanner Lectures are delivered at nine universities: Stanford, Berkeley, Utah, Michigan, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge.

Free tickets are available here. 

At the Tanner Lecture Symposium on April 10 from noon to 5 p.m. in the Gould Auditorium the Marriott Library, Professor Damrosch will deliver a keynote address, “Language Wars: Scriptworlds in Collision.”

Subsequent panels will feature University of Utah scholars Annie Greene, Jordan Johansen, Ashton Lazarus, Cindi Textor, and Rawad Wehbe; Raja Adal (University of Pittsburgh); Will Hedberg (Arizona State University); and Liron Mor (University of California, Irvine). Find the entire agenda here. 

Contact for comment: Scott Black, Director, Tanner Humanities Center, scott.black@utah.edu.

The Tanner Humanities Center supports academic research, public engagement, and educational programming in the humanities. The center offers fellowships for researchers from the University of Utah and other institutions, lecture series for the campus and community, reading groups, and professional development programs for educators.