Geoffrey Turnovsky

Prof. Turnovsky specializes in the literary and cultural history of early modern France and Europe, with an emphasis on print culture, early modern media, the profession of authorship, and on readers and publics in the early modern era. His book, The Literary Market: Authorship and Modernity in the Old Regime, appeared in 2010. His articles -- on writers  and the commercial literary market; and on readers -- have appeared in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (SVEC); Studies in Eighteenth‑Century Culture; Revue de synthèse; Modern Language Quarterly; Romanic Review; Les dossiers du Grihl; and French Historical Studies. 

Turnovsky's book Reading Typographically: Immersed in Print in Early Modern France explores the rise of new paradigms of absorptive, moralized reading in early modern France and Europe. Focusing on key evolutions in print in 17th- and 18th-century France, from typeface, print runs, and format to editorial organization and punctuation, this book argues that typographic developments upholding the transparency of the printed medium were decisive for the ascendancy of immersive reading as a dominant paradigm that shaped modern perspectives on reading and literacy. Reading Typographically is forthcoming with Stanford University Press in June 2024. Current publications drawn from this research are  here and here.

Turnovsky co-directs the UW Textual Studies Program, which offers a minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities and a Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies.