The Changing Landscape of American Studies in a Global Era
Title
The Changing Landscape of American Studies in a Global Era
Subject
Digital humanities
Description
In this white paper, Levander discusses opportunities for interdisciplinary scholarship that are unique to digital archives. Unlike the interdisciplinary regional studies prior to the mass digitization of primary sources and the Internet, current regional studies can truly adopt a global perspective, accessing data from several national archives and digital libraries—no longer limited to strictly U.S. American-created sources.
Levander notes how the digital archive is transforming scholarly research in essentially four ways: (1) the volume of available transnational data from an international array of archives and libraries is too vast for traditional methods of culling data, (2) that data recording geographic places and changes over time are represented in “spatialtemporal” databases that also provide new tools of analysis for researching cross-national and cross-cultural trends, (3) that creation of an international, hemispheric or transnational research community fosters collaboration across national, time and disciplinary boundaries, and (4) geographical and temporal databases can reshape traditional genres of literature and regional studies.
Levander states, “Digital archives can offer new opportunities for rethinking the nation-state as the organizing rubric for literary and cultural history of the Americas,” and she reminds the reader of the correspondence between the history of print and the development of nation-states (30). The digital archive provides tools for representing and visualizing data from phenomena including environmental, archaeological, and technological changes over time.
Levander notes how the digital archive is transforming scholarly research in essentially four ways: (1) the volume of available transnational data from an international array of archives and libraries is too vast for traditional methods of culling data, (2) that data recording geographic places and changes over time are represented in “spatialtemporal” databases that also provide new tools of analysis for researching cross-national and cross-cultural trends, (3) that creation of an international, hemispheric or transnational research community fosters collaboration across national, time and disciplinary boundaries, and (4) geographical and temporal databases can reshape traditional genres of literature and regional studies.
Levander states, “Digital archives can offer new opportunities for rethinking the nation-state as the organizing rubric for literary and cultural history of the Americas,” and she reminds the reader of the correspondence between the history of print and the development of nation-states (30). The digital archive provides tools for representing and visualizing data from phenomena including environmental, archaeological, and technological changes over time.
Creator
Levander, Caroline
Publisher
CLIR
Date
2009
Contributor
Polk, Victoria
Rights
CLIR
Type
Online Journal
Identifier
http://www.clir.org/pubs/resources/promoting-digital-scholarship-ii-clir-neh/levander11_11.pdf
Bibliographic Citation
Levander, Caroline. "The Changing Landscape of American Studies in a Global Era." Working Together or Apart: Promoting the Next Generation of Digital Scholarship (2008):27-33.
Files
Collection
Citation
Levander, Caroline, “The Changing Landscape of American Studies in a Global Era,” Digital Archiving Resources, accessed April 20, 2024, https://dar.cah.ucf.edu/items/show/15.