-from–
Michael Saler
History Department

The 2012 Eugene Lunn Memorial Lecture will be given by Professor Robert Darnton on Wednesday, May 2, at 7:30 p.m. in the Alpha Gamma Rho Hall, Buehler Alumni Center. (Reception to follow.) He will speak on “Books, Digits, and Dollars: A Design for the Future.” The lecture is free and open to the public.

Robert Darnton is the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library. A winner of the MacArthur Prize and numerous other awards, he has written notable works, including: The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future ; The Great Cat-Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History ; The Literary Underground of the Old Regime ; Poetry and Police: Communications Networks in Eighteenth Century Paris ; The Business of Enlightenment .

Eugene Lunn was, prior to his untimely death in 1990, a member of the Davis Department of History. In his twenty years here, he distinguished himself as a scholar in the field of modern European intellectual history. He was a passionate and productive scholar, but no less an engaged and inspired teacher. In his memory, a fund was assembled to support an annual memorial lecture. Its purpose is to honor the profession of teaching and to present to a broad and varied campus audience an exemplary discussion of issues of high significance in contemporary intellectual life.

This is the twentieth Lunn lecture, following upon those of such well-known scholars as Carl Schorske, Hayden White, Martin Jay, Saul Friedlander, Laura Engelstein, Lawrence Levine, Lynn Hunt, Thomas Bender, Bonnie Smith, Wendy Doniger, Cemal Kafadar, William Cronon, Fred Wakeman, Jan Goldstein, Suzanne Marchand, Louis Menand, Thomas Laqueur, and Mark Mazower.

The lecture, thanks to the generosity of many people, has become an important annual event at Davis. We want to take this opportunity once again to thank all of you who have previously supported this undertaking. We are currently facing a severe funding shortage, however, so if you find it possible to make a new (or renewed) contribution to the lecture fund, however small, we will be very grateful indeed. You may write a check to the “UC Regents (Lunn Memorial Fund)” and send it to Monica Fischer in the Department of History.