Digitizing Enlightenment Symposium

When: 12-13 July 2016
Where: EA.G.38, Parramatta South Campus, Western Sydney University
What: A pre-conference Symposium attached to the George Rudé seminar, organised by the Western Sydney University Digital Humanities Research Group and co-sponsored by the Centre for Digital Humanities Research (ANU); and the Australian Research Council
Convenors: Simon Burrows (WSU) and Glenn Roe (ANU) 

Symposium abstract

Scholars of the enlightenment are extremely well-served for digital resources; they have also produced some of the most celebrated, innovative and transformative digital humanities projects internationally. These have included Electronic Enlightenment (EE); Mapping the Republic of Letters (MRoL); the French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe (FBTEE); the ARTFL Encyclopédie project; and the Comédie Française Registers Project (CFRP), all of which will be discussed at the symposium.

The symposium will provide an opportunity for leaders and key participants on all of these projects and some more recent digital humanities initiatives to continue a dialogue with each other and the academic community about the ways in which their projects have transformed, and will continue to transform research practice, pedagogy and academic understandings in eighteenth-century studies and more broadly.

The themes for the conference sessions will be as follows:

Session One: Projects: participants on leading C18 projects will discuss how they came about, what they aimed to achieve, and introduce a few key findings ahead of the more detailed discussions to follow.

Session Two: Innovations, Techniques and Technologies: individual presentations will discuss and showcase some of the most productive technologies, research techniques and methodologies that they have developed and used in the course of their digital work, as well as the importance of lessons learned in the process.

Session Three: Transformations: individual presentations will discuss innovative pedagogical, research and public engagement uses of the new digital technologies and resources produced by C18 DH projects AND the ways in which research on these projects or through the resources they have produced has been transforming the research field in and beyond eighteenth-century studies.

Session Four: Visions and Revisions: In this Round table discussion invited participants will assess the present and future impact of digital humanities on eighteenth-century studies, future collaborative possibilities, and the ways in which digital technologies are transforming wider research and teaching culture and the challenges and opportunities facing digital humanists.

Confirmed speakers for the Digitizing Enlightenment symposium include:

• Dan Edelstein (MRoL project, Stanford)
• Glenn Roe (ARTFL and EE projects, ANU)
• Simon Burrows and Jason Ensor (FBTEE project, Western Sydney)
• Robert McNamee (EE, Oxford)
• Sean Takats (George Mason)
• Alicia Montoya (MEDIATE, Radboud University)
• Jeff Ravel (CFRP, MIT) – who will present remotely

In addition to invited papers, there is potentially space in the programme for papers addressing the key themes of the first, second and third sessions of the symposium. Anyone wishing to present to these sessions should in the first instance contact Simon Burrows s.burrows@westernsydney.edu.au

It is envisaged that papers from the symposium will form the backbone of a book to be edited by the convenors under the title Digitizing Enlightenment.

Registrations for the Digitizing Enlightenment symposium can be made through the University's
i-Pay system under the 'School of Humanities and Communication Arts' rubric using the following link: i-Pay (opens in a new window). The registration fee will include two days' coffees and lunches. Instructions on how to use i-Pay can be found at i-Pay instructions for Digitizing Enlightenment Symposium (opens in a new window).