The Past Speaks

From the New York Times:

A history of the humanities in the 20th century could be chronicled in “isms” — formalism, Freudianism, structuralism, postcolonialism — grand intellectual cathedrals from which assorted interpretations of literature, politics and culture spread.

The next big idea in language, history and the arts? Data.

Members of a new generation of digitally savvy humanists argue it is time to stop looking for inspiration in the next political or philosophical “ism” and start exploring how technology is changing our understanding of the liberal arts.

Read more here. (This is the first in a series of articles about how IT is revolutionizing humanities research).

I was very interested in this article for two reasons. First, I am currently involved in a digitization project of the sort this article describes. Second, I thought it was somewhat curious that the author of article thinks that theory (e.g., “isms”) and empirical data are somehow antithetical– namely, that scholars have to choose between being aware of social theory and faithful to what the primary sources have to say. Ideally, theory and empirical data should go hand in hand, since empirical research is the only way to test the veracity of theories.  Good humanities researchers have always been both empirical and theoretical.

The field of historical research has been revolutionized by new technologies in the last ten years.  In my opinion, these technologies are, in rough order of importance:

1) online archival catalogues, which make it much easier to travel to distant archives

2) use of digital cameras in archives to record primary sources (allows cash-strapped researchers to shorten research trips and thus save money)

3) digitized historical newspapers