Digitizing Enlightenment

Digital Humanities and the Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Studies

by Simon BurrowsGlenn Roe
Contributors: Keith Michael BakerElizabeth Andrews BondRobert M. BondSimon BurrowsCatherine Nicole ColemanMelanie ConroyCharles CooneyNicholas CronkDan EdelsteinChloe Summers EdmondsonRichard FrautschciClovis GladstoneHoward HotsonKatherine McDonoughAngus MartinAlicia C. MontoyaRobert MorrisseyJeffrey S. RavelGlenn RoeSean Takats

Digitizing Enlightenment explores how a set of inter-related digital projects are transforming our vision of the Enlightenment.

In the past decade, the emergence of digital humanities as a field has been attracting a rising tide of interest from professional academics, the media, funding councils, and the general public worldwide. Advocates and practitioners of the digital humanities argue that computational methods can fundamentally transform our ability to answer some of the ‘big questions’ that drive humanities research, allowing us to see patterns and relationships that were hitherto hard to discern, and to pinpoint, visualise, and analyse relevant data in efficient and powerful new ways. This book reflects an important statement of the field, as it pertains to eighteenth-century studies.

Highlighting current and future research methods and directions for digital eighteenth-century studies, the book offers a monument to the current state of digital work, an overview of current findings, and a vision statement for future research.

Cover image art designed by Evan Casey for the Voltaire Foundation. ©Liverpool University Press

About Digitizing Enlightenment

In July 2016, an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars of eighteenth century culture, taking different approaches in their work, met for a workshop to find connections across their respective projects and to identify prospects for broader linkages in Enlightenment research through digital methods.
That workshop became the first of what is now an annual event, under the name "Digitizing Enlightenment." Building on that initial workshop, the print version of this book discusses those projects, those points of common concern, and important paths for subsequent research and innovation. In the book’s opening section, leading scholars outline their own projects’ institutional and intellectual histories, the techniques and methodologies they specifically developed, the sometimes-painful lessons learned in the process, future trajectories for their research, and how their findings are revising previous understandings. A second section features chapters from early career scholars working at the intersection of digital methods and Enlightenment studies, an intellectual space largely forged by the projects featured in part one.

This digital version contains the text of the volume's preface, introduction and table of contents, as well as full-color, high resolution reproductions of all visualizations, maps, figures, and tables referred to in the book.
The six projects described and analyzed in the book have gone on to become some of the leading initiatives on the digital Enlightenment:

The ARTFL Encyclopédie Project
The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe
Electronic Enlightenment
Mapping the Republic of Letters
The Comédie-Française Registers Project
MEDIATE: Measuring Enlightenment Disseminating Ideas, Authors and Texts in Europe (1665-1830)
Cultures of Knowledge

For assistance in the preparation of this digital companion, special thanks to Terence Smyre of University of Minnesota Press; Nicole Batten and the Department of History and College of Liberal Arts of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Preview (Preface, Introduction, Table of Contents)

In this digital version, readers may consult and download the preface, introduction and table of contents. The full text of the book's chapters, and post-face, may be consulted in the print book.

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Metadata

  • container title
    Digitizing Enlightenment: Digital Humanities and the Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Studies
  • isbn
    9781789621945
  • original publisher
    Voltaire Foundation
  • original publisher place
    Oxford, UK
  • publisher
    Liverpool University Press
  • publisher place
    Liverpool, UK
  • restrictions
    All rights reserved
  • rights
    Copyright Liverpool University Press 2020
  • rights holder
    Liverpool University Press
  • rights territory
    World
  • series number
    2020:07
  • series title
    Oxford University Studies in the Enlighenment