Open AccessTowards a New Digital Historicism?
Author(s) -
Andreas Fickers
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
view
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2213-0969
DOI - 10.18146/2213-0969.2012.jethc004
Subject(s) - digitization , historicism , new historicism , interpretation (philosophy) , institutionalisation , boom , criticism , field (mathematics) , sociology , history , aesthetics , political science , media studies , literature , law , art , engineering , computer science , telecommunications , mathematics , environmental engineering , pure mathematics , programming language
This article argues that the contemporary hype in digitization anddissemination of our cultural heritage – especially of audiovisual sources –is comparable to the boom of critical source editions in the late 19thcentury. But while the dramatic rise of accessibility to and availability ofsources in the 19th century went hand in hand with the development of newscholarly skills of source interpretation and was paralleled by theinstitutionalization of history as an academic profession, a similar trendof an emerging digital historicism today seems absent. This essay aims atreflecting on the challenges and chances that the discipline of history –and the field of television history in particular – is actually facing. Itoffers some thoughts and ideas on how the digitization of sources and theironline availability affects the established practices of sourcecriticism.