Proofs of Genius: Collected Editions from the American Revolution to the Digital Age by Amanda Gailey

Author:Amanda Gailey
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press
Published: 2018-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

2. Scholarly Editing and the Behavioral Sciences

During World War II, the federal government began pouring unprecedented amounts of money into military research and development. At the close of the war, the momentum transferred into a research and development policy in which the government underwrote research activities that worked for the common good and bolstered the international reputation Page 86 →of the United States.11 The underlying research and development principle was that government would fund basic research—sometimes thought of as knowledge for knowledge’s sake—and commercial enterprises, squeamish about investing in expensive research with no clear practical outcome, could then use the fruits of government-funded research to develop specific, profitable applications. We typically hear about this momentous rise of research and development in regard to its influence on the sciences in American universities—as it transformed universities around the country into federally funded laboratories—but this policy shift was similarly consequential to the field of American scholarly editing, which scarcely existed before World War II and has never since enjoyed the energy and bounty of the Cold War years, except perhaps in the first decade of the twenty-first century, when it was reenergized by the advent of digital editions.

During the Cold War, a crop of ad hoc federal agencies arose to fund a number of projects designed to showcase not only America’s scientific prowess but also its cultural and artistic accomplishments. This was an era not only of supersonic flight, the moon landing, and general-purpose computers, but also of “goodwill tours,” “jazz ambassadors,” and other efforts to show both America’s Cold War enemies and developing nations the enviableness of the American Way. Government funds had tended to support scientific knowledge, but humanistic inquiry presented a thornier subject, because it often dealt directly with studying and interpreting ideology, and was thereby quite difficult to present as value-neutral. What was needed was a humanist enterprise that was seemingly free of ideology but that affirmed American history and cultural accomplishment in a way that evaded ideological, political, and cultural scrutiny by politicians and the public.

In the 1960s, the federal government laid the groundwork for such endeavors. In 1964, the government approved funding for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to “edit and publish papers of outstanding citizens of the United States.” In 1965, Congress passed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, which postulated, “An advanced civilization must not limit its efforts to science and technology alone.”12 It argued:

The world leadership which has come to the United States cannot rest solely upon superior power, wealth, and technology, but must be solidly founded upon worldwide respect and admiration for the Nation’s high qualities as a leader in the realm of ideas and of the spirit.13

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