Disappearing Ink? The Revival of the Letter {Emeritus Society, Sponsored by the Office of Alumni Engagement}

You might think the letter is, if not dead, in serious decline. Who gets a letter nowadays? Who writes one? In this world of AI-generated sentences and IMs, the letter seems more than quaint. It’s a hindrance to the instant communication we’ve come to expect. And yet people save them, write them still. And there are signs of a resurgence. A popular podcast features famous people reading letters. A recent epistolary novel is a bestseller. After years of neglect, handwriting is again being taught in schools, and often the first thing a child writes is a letter.
A letter, no matter its topic or its age, brings people to life, mysteriously as immediate as when the ink was still damp.  We listen in,  and we find clues to the inner life of correspondents, intimate hurts and joys that get revealed to us, often in a language far deeper than the words on the page.
 
We’ll read fiction, old (a horror story) and new (a life story and a children’s book), told through letters; and we’ll read letters that span the centuries — written by children, rulers, lovers, poets, and soldiers—a wide spectrum of human life.

You may feel the call to write a letter of your own by the time we finish our study!

Click here to register and learn more.