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

Digitizing Enlightenment resource collections