The Early Modern Digital

Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies: Special Issue on the Early Modern Digital (due 15 Jan 2013) It is well understood that "the digital turn" has transformed the contemporary cultural, political and economic environment. Less appreciated perhaps is its crucial importance and transformative potential for those of us who study the past. Whether through newly-and differently-accessible data and methods (e.g. "distant reading"), new questions being asked of that new data, or recognizing how digital reading changes our access to the materiality of the past, the digital humanities engenders a particularized set of questions and concerns for those of us who study the early modern, broadly defined (mid-15th to mid-19th centuries). For this special issue of JEMCS, we seek essays that describe the challenges and debates arising from issues in the early modern digital, as well as work that shows through its methods, questions, and conclusions the kinds of scholarship that ought best be done-or perhaps can only be done- in its wake. We look for contributions that go beyond describing the advantages and shortcomings of (or problems of inequity of access to) EEBO, ECCO, and the ESTC to contemplate how new forms of information produce new ways of thinking. We invite contributors to consider the broader implications and uses of existing and emerging early modern digital projects, including data mining, data visualization, corpus linguistics, GIS, and/or potential obsolescence, especially in comparison to insights possible through traditional archival research methods. Essays of 3000-8000 words are sought in .doc, .rtf, or.pdf format by January 15, 2013 tojemcsfsu@gmail.com. All manuscripts must include a 100-200 word abstract. JEMCS adheres to MLA format, and submissions should be prepared accordingly. In addition, we would welcome brief reports (500-1500 words) that describe digital projects in progress in early modern studies (defined here as spanning from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries), whether or not these projects have yet reached completion. These reports, too, should be submitted in .doc, .rtf, or.pdf format, using MLA style, by 15 January 2013 to to jemcsfsu@gmail.com. Devoney Looser, Catherine Paine Middlebush Chair and Professor of English Co-Editor, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies Tate Hall 114 Department of English University of Missouri Columbia, MO 65211 573-884-7791 FAX: 573-882-5785 looserd@missouri.edu http://www.devoneylooser.com