Elizabeth Lewisohn Eisenstein (October 11, 1923 – January 31, 2016) was an American historian of the French Revolution and early 19th-century France. She is well known for her work on the history of early

printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ...

, writing on the transition in media between the era of ' manuscript culture' and that of '

print culture Print culture embodies all forms of printed text and other printed forms of visual communication. One prominent scholar of print culture in Europe is Elizabeth Eisenstein, who contrasted the print culture of Europe in the centuries after the ad ...

', as well as the role of the

printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in whi ...

in effecting broad cultural change in Western civilization.

Career

Eisenstein was educated at Vassar College where she received her A.B., then went on to

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was founded in 1879. In 1999, it was fully incorporated into Harvard Colle ...

for her M.A. and Ph.D. It was there she studied under Crane Brinton. She reported that in the early 1950s she was not able to find a position in a university history department, not even part-time work. In 1957, after she had obtained her PhD, she and her husband moved to Washington, D.C. where she applied to multiple institutions for teaching positions, including Georgetown, George Washington University, Howard, and the University of Maryland. She eventually found a part-time position at

American University The American University (AU or American) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Its main campus spans 90-acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, in the Spri ...

. She taught as an adjunct professor at

from 1959 to 1974, then the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

, where she was the Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History. In 1979 she was resident consultant for the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress. She held positions as a fellow at the Humanities Research Center of the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

and at the

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) is an interdisciplinary research institution at Stanford University designed to advance the frontiers of knowledge about human behavior and society, and contribute to the resoluti ...

(Palo Alto). Eisenstein was visiting professor at Wolfson College, Oxford, and published her lectures from that period as ''Grub Street Abroad''. She was professor emerita at the University of Michigan and an honorary fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. Her last work was '' Divine Art, Infernal Machine, the Reception of Printing in the West'' (Penn Press, 2011).

Family and personal life

Eisenstein is the third daughter of Sam A. Lewisohn, son of

Adolph Lewisohn Adolph Lewisohn (May 27, 1849 – August 17, 1938) was a German Jewish immigrant born in Hamburg who became a New York City investment banker, mining magnate, and philanthropist. He is the namesake of Lewisohn Hall (which formerly housed the Colu ...

and Margaret Seligman, granddaughter of Joseph Seligman and Babet Steinhardt. She married Julian Calvert Eisenstein in 1948. They had 4 children - one who died at birth in 1949 and another who died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1974. Her husband died three months after her death. They were survived by two children, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. From the age of 50, Eisenstein began competing in senior tennis tournaments, becoming well-known and winning three national grand slams between 2003-2005.

''The Printing Press as an Agent of Change''

Eisenstein's best-known work is ''The Printing Press as an Agent of Change'' (1980), a two-volume, 750-page exploration of the effects of

movable type Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable Sort (typesetting), components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric charac ...

printing on the literate elite of post-Gutenberg Western Europe. In this work she focuses on the printing press's functions of dissemination, standardization, and preservation and the way these functions aided the progress of the

Protestant Reformation The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and ...

, the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

, and the

Scientific Revolution The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of History of science, modern science during the early modern period, when developments in History of mathematics#Mathematics during the Scientific Revolution, mathemati ...

. Eisenstein's work brought historical method, rigor, and clarity to earlier ideas of

Marshall McLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (, ; July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media studies, media theory. Raised in Winnipeg, McLuhan studied at the University of Manitoba a ...

and others, about the general social effects of such media transitions. This work provoked debate in the academic community from the moment it was published and is still inspiring conversation and new research today. Her work also influenced later thinking about the subsequent development of

digital media In mass communication, digital media is any media (communication), communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, an ...

. Her work on the transition from manuscript to print influenced thought about new transitions of print text to digital formats, including

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

and new ideas about the definition of text. Eisenstein’s book has also received sharp criticism. Paul Needham, now Librarian at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

’s Scheide Library, described it as "almost impossible to comprehend" and suffering "from more general flaws of historical method: an unconcern for exact chronology; a lack of historical context; an exclusive reliance of icsecondary writings, not always accurately absorbed, not always particularly relevant …"

The Unacknowledged Revolution

''The Printing Press as an Agent of Change'' lays out Eisenstein's thoughts on the "Unacknowledged Revolution," her name for the revolution that occurred after the invention of print. Print media allowed the general public to have access to books and knowledge that had not been available to them before; this led to the growth of public knowledge and individual thought. The ability to formulate thought on one's own thoughts became reality with the popularity of the printing press. Print also "standardized and preserved knowledge which had been much more fluid in the age of oral manuscript circulation" Eisenstein recognizes this period of time to be very important in the development of human culture; however, she feels that it is often overlooked, thus, the 'unacknowledged revolution'.

Eisenstein-Johns Debate

In 2002, Eisenstein was involved in a debate with Adrian Johns in the ''

American Historical Review ''The American Historical Review'' is a quarterly academic history journal published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association, for which it is an official publication. It targets readers interested in all periods ...

'' over the degree to which printing was necessarily an agent of change or, as Johns argued, a vehicle of change which mostly carried messages that were shaped by outside social forces.

Awards

Eisenstein has received various awards and recognitions, including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

, and the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The foundation was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (" ...

. In 2002, she received the

American Historical Association The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world, claiming over 10,000 members. Founded in 1884, AHA works to protect academic free ...

's Award for Scholarly Distinction, and in 2004 the University of Michigan awarded her the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. She gave the A.S.W. Rosenbach Lectures in Bibliography in 2010: "Divine Art / Infernal Machine: Western Views of Printing Surveyed." In 2012 she was awarded the Gutenberg Prize of the International Gutenberg Society and the City of Mainz In 1993, the National Coalition of Independent Scholars created the ''Eisenstein Prize'', which is awarded biannually to members of the organization who have produced work with an independent focus.

Selected bibliography

* Based on the Rosenbach lectures, March 2010. * Includes a new afterword by the author. * Series : Lyell lectures 1990-1991. * Series : The Sixth Hanes lecture. * * * "Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing on Western Society and Thought: A Preliminary Report," ''The Journal of Modern History'' Vol. 40, No. 1, March 1968 *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eisenstein, Elizabeth 1923 births 2016 deaths American people of German-Jewish descent Historians of the French Revolution Historians of France Jewish American historians Theorists on Western civilization Literacy and society theorists American women historians Vassar College alumni University of Michigan faculty Articles containing video clips Historians of printing Lewisohn family Mass media theorists American philosophers of technology Radcliffe College alumni 21st-century American Jews 21st-century American women