The Digital - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The Digital Charlotte Smith

Allison Croley (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Dermot Ryan,

Ph.D

)

Junior

English major

Philosophy minorSlide2

Presentation Overview

History/Background: Digital Humanities (DH)

Promise/Concerns

Charlotte Smith/Digital Tools

Concluding ThoughtsSlide3

What is DH?

“[The] Digital

H

umanities include, among other kinds of projects, text encoding and analysis, digital editions of print works, historical research that recreates historical architecture in virtual reality formats … archival and geospatial sites, and … electronic literature and digital art that draws on or remediates humanities traditions (

Hayles

, 27)

First wave

: “quantitative, mobilizing the search a d retrieval powers of the database, automating corpus linguistics, stacking

hypercards

into critical arrays” (26)

Second wave:

“qualitative, interpretive, experimental, emotive, generative in character” (26)Slide4

The Promise of DH

Digital tools assist in research and teaching

Project-based, collaborative, opportunities for scholars and students in humanitiesSlide5

The concerns about DH

Are Digital Humanities the humanities at all?

Are its methods the methods of the sciences?

Where is DH going?

Is DH merely a symptom of our obsession with technology?Slide6

Putting theory into practice: Charlotte Smith’s Beachy Head

Started as research paper for Romantic Genres

Explored pastoral and counter pastoral elements in Smith’s poem

Not much work done on pastoral, more work done on topographical and political elements

My question: Could digital tools enrich my research?Slide7

Tool #1: Voyant

Online text analysis tool that organizes words statistically based on frequency

My first digital experiment

Findings:

Need “hypothesis”

The more text, the better

Word cloud can be deceiving Slide8

Test #1Slide9

Test #2Slide10
Slide11
Slide12

How is Voyant useful?

Allows readers to test patterns they see in text

Potentially allows readers to see new patterns in text

Helps readers visualize the architecture of the textSlide13

Tool #2: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)

Fully searchable online database of 18

th

Century texts

Test #1: Searched “

Beachy

Head

” between 1650 and 1800

Most texts about war and storms at sea/shipwreck

Solidifies argument that Smith was drawing on accurate history and science

Test #2: Searched (

Beachy

Head) AND (Charlotte Smith)

The cave the Hermit in

Beachy

Head

dwells in is factual

The Hermit is a character from one of Smith’s prior novels

After

Beachy

Head

was published, the Hermit disappears from later editions of the novelSlide14

How is ECCO Useful?

Access for undergraduates

Enriches context

Expands researchSlide15

Wordpress

Information architecture

Interpretive act

Present to wider audienceSlide16

Final reflections

Gains:

Scholarly – new patterns across large bodies of work

Interpretive – databases, information architecture, design

Pedagogical – word could, immediate understanding (pictures, virtual simulations, etc.)

Further recommendations:

People are already doing it -- great if faculty who are doing it could share

Helping us to do what we already to better – great if better integrated into curriculum

Tools could be accepted as part of scholarship we do as undergraduates

How to incorporate into English department?Slide17

Thank you

Dr. Dermot Ryan,

Ph.D

(Faculty Mentor)

Melanie Hubbard, Archives and Special Collections Assistant

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Works Cited

Hayles

, Katherine.

How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary

Technogenesis

.

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012. Print.