Media Scholarship and 18th‐Century Studies

Abstract

AbstractAcknowledging the foundational work of Elizabeth L. Eisenstein in 18th‐century media studies, this article summarizes media scholarship in 18th‐century studies before and after 1979, with emphasis in the 1990s through the present. Since the decade before the new millennium and inspired, in part, by the late 20th‐century concept of the “information age,” scholars of 18th‐century history have redefined both the terms and the frameworks of media studies to articulate the cultural, social, economic, political, and artistic implications of information theory, print culture, mediation, mediality, and media archaeology. The essay considers the historical centrality of print in media studies and locates the more recent scholarly shift toward multimodal representations of mediation and data analytics. The essay argues for the potential of media scholarship in historical study to bridge student interests in social networking with the mediations of the past and to encourage open access scholarship in digital forms.