DHCommons

I convene a faculty seminar in eighteenth-century studies that has been awarded a seed grant for 2012 from the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute to pursue external grants and develop The Eighteenth-Century Common, a web project that will provide a medium for eighteenth-century scholars to communicate with an eager public non-academic readership. We believe the potential for public interest in our work is demonstrated by the success of popular books such as Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder (Knopf), named one of the top 10 books of 2009 by The New York Times, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books (indeed it was so popular that it was on sale at Costco for $11). Our web project begins with responses by Wake Forest scholars to Holmes' work, presenting material that enriches and contextualizes his account. We will then present a periodic thematic series of short articles, images, blog posts, and other content aimed not at other academics or students, but at the readers who were so enthralled with Holmes’ book. We solicit content from academic contributors beyond our campus, including descriptions written for a lay audience of recently published scholarly work in eighteenth-century studies, descriptions of interesting holdings in a university archive, museum, or rare book collection, descriptions of critical controversies or research problems in the field, etc. We seek both specific contributions as well as ideas for content development of the site.

Our vision is that The Eighteenth-Century Common will be a site of public humanities scholarship, with the primary goal of communicating the results of our scholarship outside the academy.