Schedule

Note: While readings here are linked to online resources, we have also uploaded them to our Resources page. Please email us if you would like access.

October 20 | The Research Question
In our first meeting, we posed the question of how to adapt humanistic research questions for the logically designed computational research domain. Richard Jean So joined us to talk about how he arrived at the topic of his new project on racial discourse in the twentieth-century American novel. Richard is an Assistant Professor in English at the University of Chicago and Co-Director of the Chicago Text Lab). We discussed excerpts from Matthew Jockers’s Macroanalysis, and Richard and Hoyt Long‘s article in CI, “Literary Pattern Recognition: Modernism Between Close Reading and Machine Learning.”

November 16 | Data and Metadata
This meeting surveyed the ways that metadata and data can be used to direct analysis. Hoyt Long talked about how he used metadata to produce research for his article, “Fog and Steel: Mapping Communities of Literary Translation in an Information Age,” recently published in The Journal of Japanese Studies. Hoyt is Associate Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of Chicago and Co-Director of the Chicago Text Lab. As a case study of humanistic data analysis, we discussed Daniel Shore’s “WWJD? The Genealogy of a Syntactic Form.”

January 20 | Relational Databases
Clovis Gladstone talked about his work constructing the ARTFL database. In particular, he gave us an inside look at the new capabilities of PhiloLogic 4. Readings included Stephen Ramsay’s article “Databases” in the Blackwell Companion to Digital Humanities, as well as several chapters from Clare Churcher’s Beginning Database Design.

February 17 | Techniques of Macroanalysis
Talking to us over Skype, Ted Underwood gave us an overview of macroanalysis. In particular, we discussed specific ways that macroanalytic methods shape humanistic inquiry. Ted is Professor and LAS Centennial Scholar of English at the University of Illinois; his blog, The Stone and the Shell, is also an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the field. To orient discussion, we read Matthew Jockers on correlation and topic modeling (here), Scott Weingart on network analysis (here; the entire series is linked here) and Michael Gavin on vector-space modeling (here).

March 2 | Mid-Year Presentations
Five presenters talked about the development of and plans for the following projects:

  • Matthew Aspeel, “After the Award: the Booker Prize and Cultural Capital”
  • Stefano Cagnato, “The Ghost of Magical Realism in World Literature”
  • Katia Fowler, “The Social World of Katherine Philips”
  • Jess Rubin, “Gaming for Gender: The Use of Narrative and Violence in Crafting Gender Identity in Videogames”
  • Mohammed Sagha, “Early Shi’i Socio-Political Organization: An Exploration of Twelver Shi’i Underground Networks in the 9th-11th Centuries.”

Each presentation was followed by a workshop-style discussion.

April 20 | Data Visualization
For this meeting, we will consider how to represent your data visually. Readings will include excerpts from Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Beautiful Evidence.

May 19 and 20 | DHChicago: New Archival Knowledges
Thursday, May 19, 4:30-6:00:
“In Defence of Search”
Daniel Shore, Associate Professor of English, Georgetown University