News of Alumni: Chris Warren '95

Chris Warren ‘95, who teaches 17th-century literature at Carnegie Mellon University, recently led a research project analyzing the 375-year-old political tract “Areopagitica” by John Milton. “Areopagitica” is a manifesto that is often cited in law school First Amendment classes as a foundational tract for the idea of press freedom.

Though the author of “Areopagitica” has always been known, how it came to be printed remained a mystery for more than four decades. That was what Chris and his colleagues, Pierce Williams, Shruti Rijhwani, and Max G’Sell, set out to discover.

To complete the project, the team harnessed computer technology that takes into account variations in inking levels and character appearances, among other elements. Through this process they were able to identify the London printers Matthew Simmons, Thomas Paine, and perhaps Gregory Dexter as the figures who first published Milton’s words.

 

“[The discovery] is significant because we have spent a lot of time thinking about the freedom of the press without thinking too much about the individuals who are responsible for the materials in which those ideas were expressed. There are real flesh and blood humans who were making books and making arguments, risking their lives so they could give this idea attention,” said Chris about the research project.

You can read the full article about the project in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette here.

Congratulations, Chris!