Professor Haun Saussy, from the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of Chinese and comparative literature, delivers the first lecture in the 2014 De Carle Lecture series, Oral vs. Written: The Curious History of a Cultural Distinction. Though it has become part of our common-sense understanding, the idea of a deep and comprehensive difference between the ways of thinking in predominantly oral and predominantly written cultures dates to the early twentieth century, at the most, and received its impetus from polemics now largely forgotten. By retracing this history, we can work out a genealogy for media studies that will accommodate a larger definition of the human. 18 September 2014