INTELLECTUAL HISTORY AND DIGITAL HUMANITIES

Abstract

The digital age has been a boon for intellectual historians, particularly those of us who work on early modern Europe and America. The mass digitization of old books has made research more efficient than ever: first editions are there for the downloading on Google Books, Gallica, Liberty Fund, Project Gutenberg, and elsewhere. The creation of such large-scale databases as Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth-Century Collection Online (ECCO), the Making of the Modern World (formerly Goldsmiths’–Kress), or, on a more modest level, the ARTFL project's FRANTEXT, has also breathed new life into old texts. Books that lay forgotten for generations can now be rediscovered thanks to the magic of search engines. To be sure, this power has not always been wielded for good: students today can “cite anything, but construe nothing,” stringing together KWICs (keywords in context), and reading only a surrounding sentence or two (if that). But however they are used, these tools and platforms have transformed our daily work habits.