Monday, March 30, 5pm

Franke Institute for the Humanities, Regenstein Library
1100 E. 57th St., Chicago, IL 60637

What happens when an ancient language meets modern technology? This talk draws on Ido Ramati’s recently published book Lingua ex Machina (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) to explore how modern Hebrew emerged alongside the media technologies that carried it. From early sound recordings and typewriters to telegraphic code, Hebrew was not merely transmitted through modern media—it was reshaped by them. These technologies standardized pronunciation, reorganized script, disciplined writing practices, and helped redefine what counted as “living” language.

By revisiting the revitalization of Hebrew through a technological lens, the lecture offers a new way of thinking about language and modernity: not as separate spheres, but as deeply intertwined processes in which machines participate in cultural and linguistic renewal.

If you cannot attend in person, you may watch the talk on Zoom. Register here.

Ido Ramati is a lecturer (US assistant professor) at the Department of Communication and Journalism and the Program in Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on the relations between media technologies and culture. He concentrates on the role technical apparatuses play in shaping the conditions for a range of social phenomena in traditional media as well as contemporary digital culture. Combining cultural critique with historical and theoretical analysis, he explores how language and media inform ideological, political, economic and cultural processes such as the construction of linguistic and national identity.

Presented by the Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies with funding from the Sarah (Bunny) and Leo Horvitz Memorial Lectureship Fund.