Sydney Digital Humanities Research Group seminar

Digital Humanities and the Transformation of 18th-Century Studies

Prof Simon Burrows (Western Sydney University) and Assoc Prof Melanie Conroy (University of Memphis)

Abstract

In this seminar we will discuss how eighteenth-century studies and our views of 18th-century history and culture have been transformed by digital humanities, paying specific attention to the ‘remarkable and interrelated intellectual and digital projects’ featured in Digitizing Enlightenment: Digital Humanities and the Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Studies, a collection of essays published in July 2020 by Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment. The book, on which the presenters collaborated, contends that the Enlightenment has been particularly well served by scholarly digitization and digital research projects, enabling a collective revision of the Enlightenment. It has thus provided a fertile laboratory for digital humanities research, and exemplar for how it can transform historical understanding and practices. At the same time, it seeks to demonstrate that

The seminar will consist of two short papers and an extended opportunity for discussion. Prior to attending the seminar, participants might like to read the Introduction to Digitizing Enlightenment.

About the presenters

Simon Burrows is a Professor of History and Digital Humanities at Western Sydney University, Australia, where he is Leader of the Digital Humanities Research Group. He is Principal Investigator of the French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe (FBTEE) database, a project which was awarded the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Digital Resource Prize in 2017. He is the author of French Exile Journalism and European Politics, 1792-1814 (Royal Historical Society, 2000), Blackmail, Scandal and Revolution: London’s French Libellistes, 1758-1792 (Manchester UP, 2006), A King’s Ransom: The Life of Charles Théveneau de Morande, Blackmailer, Scandalmonger, and Master-Spy (Continuum, 2010), The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe II: Enlightenment Bestsellers (Bloomsbury, 2018), and co-editor with Glenn Roe of Digitizing Enlightenment: Digital Humanities and the Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Studies (Oxford Studies in Enlightenment, 2020). He has, since 2012, also written numerous pieces on Digital Humanities and historical bibliometrics.

Melanie Conroy is Melanie Conroy is Associate Professor of French at the University of Memphis. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and Master’s degrees in French and Comparative Literature from the University of Paris 8 and the University at Buffalo. Her research explores social networks, visual studies, and gender in post-1700 French literary circles, especially salons and academies. She has published articles in Poetics Today, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Médias 19, Romance Notes, and the Journal of Modern History, as well as contributing to Digitizing Enlightenment. She is currently working on book manuscripts on the cultural history of European salons as sites of literary production and Digital Humanities approaches to literary geography. She is the co-director of the Salons Project, a part of Mapping the Republic of Letters at Stanford University and the convener of “Digital Humanities Methods,” a Community of Research Scholars at the University of Memphis. Her work in digital humanities is primarily about the intersection of social networks and geography in literature and the cultural sphere.

Join online via Zoom.

For more information, contact: Associate Professor Francesco Borghesi – francesco.borghesi@sydney.edu.au

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