John Durham Peters

John Durham Peters (born 1958) is the María Rosa Menocal Professor of English and of Film & Media Studies at Yale University. A media historian and social theorist, he has authored a number of noted scholarly works. His first book, ''Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication'', traces out broad historical, philosophical, religious, cultural, legal, and technological contexts for the study of communication. His second book ''Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition'' updates the philosophy of free expression with a history of liberal thought since Paul of Tarsus. His signal work of media philosophy ''The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media'' radically rethinks how media are environments and environments are also media. His most recent book, coauthored with the late Kenneth Cmiel, ''Promiscuous Knowledge'' offers a genealogy of the information age from its earliest origins, focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into the present moment. He has advised dozens of dissertations and published hundreds of articles and chapters. Peters has held fellowships with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Leverhulme Trust, among others.

Peters grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, pursued studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and graduated with a BA in English from the University of Utah, where he also earned his MA in speech communication. He received a PhD in communication theory and research from Stanford University in 1986 before accepting a faculty appointment at the University of Iowa. After teaching there for thirty years, he accepted a position at Yale University in 2017. Provided by Wikipedia