2012/01/01 by Paula McDowell · 3 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Digital Humanities and Scholarship #Visual Culture and Art Theory #Media, Communication, and Education #Ephemera #Pejorative #Rhetorical question #Discipline #History #Value (mathematics) #Ideology #Literature #Face (sociological concept) #Genealogy #Sociology #Art #Social science #Art history #Politics #Computer science #Linguistics #Law
paper · doi:10.1353/bh.2012.0009
openalex publication_date 2012/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
The category “ephemera,” like the category “Literature,” is a classification that does powerful rhetorical, practical, ideological, and disciplinary work. This essay historicizes these value-laden classifications across disciplinary and period boundaries. It begins by suggesting how librarians and collectors have defined ephemera since the 1960s, then steps back to the eighteenth century in Britain, arguing that the categories of “ephemera” and “Literature” were reciprocally constructed parts of a classification system that was a response to the commercialization of letters and the proliferation of print. But today, new media technologies and digital archives are destabilizing centuries-old categorical distinctions, and eighteenth-century authors’ classification work can help us to think through the challenges and opportunities we face in the digital age.