Can We Be Wrong? The Problem of Textual Evidence in a Time of Data PDF Download

Author: Andrew Piper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108918220
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
This Element tackles the problem of generalization with respect to text-based evidence in the field of literary studies. When working with texts, how can we move, reliably and credibly, from individual observations to more general beliefs about the world? The onset of computational methods has highlighted major shortcomings of traditional approaches to texts when it comes to working with small samples of evidence. This Element combines a machine learning-based approach to detect the prevalence and nature of generalization across tens of thousands of sentences from different disciplines alongside a robust discussion of potential solutions to the problem of the generalizability of textual evidence. It exemplifies the way mixed methods can be used in complementary fashion to develop nuanced, evidence-based arguments about complex disciplinary issues in a data-driven research environment.

Author: Andrew Piper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108926201
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 75

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Book Description
This Element tackles the problem of generalization with respect to text-based evidence in the field of literary studies. When working with texts, how can we move, reliably and credibly, from individual observations to more general beliefs about the world? The onset of computational methods has highlighted major shortcomings of traditional approaches to texts when it comes to working with small samples of evidence. This Element combines a machine learning-based approach to detect the prevalence and nature of generalization across tens of thousands of sentences from different disciplines alongside a robust discussion of potential solutions to the problem of the generalizability of textual evidence. It exemplifies the way mixed methods can be used in complementary fashion to develop nuanced, evidence-based arguments about complex disciplinary issues in a data-driven research environment.

Author: Gerben Zaagsma
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110744821
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
As in all fields and disciplines of the humanities, Jewish Studies scholars find themselves confronted with the rapidly increasing availability of digital resources (data), new technologies to interrogate and analyze them (tools), and the question of how to critically engage with these developments. This volume discusses how the digital turn has affected the field of Jewish Studies. It explores the current state of the art and probes how digital developments can be harnessed to address the specific questions, challenges and problems that Jewish Studies scholars confront. In a field characterised by dispersed sources, and heterogeneous scripts and languages that speak to a multitude of cultures and histories, of abundance as well as loss, what is the promise of Digital Humanities methods--and what are the challenges and pitfalls? The articles in this volume were originally presented at the international conference #DHJewish - Jewish Studies in the Digital Age, which was organised at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) at University of Luxembourg in January 2021. The first big international conference of its kind, it brought together more than sixty scholars and heritage practitioners to discuss how the digital turn affects the field of Jewish Studies.

Author: Peter de Bolla
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009263579
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
What would the history of ideas look like if we were able to read the entire archive of printed material of a historical period? Would our 'great men (usually)' story of how ideas are formed and change over time begin to look very different? This book explores these questions through case studies on ideas such as 'liberty', 'republicanism' or 'government' using digital humanities approaches to large scale text data sets. It sets out the methodologies and tools created by the Cambridge Concept Lab as exemplifications of how new digital methods can open up the history of ideas to heretofore unseen avenues of enquiry and evidence. By applying text mining techniques to intellectual history or the history of concepts, this book explains how computational approaches to text mining can substantially increase the power of our understanding of ideas in history.

Author: Christopher Newfield
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226817156
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This collection examines the uses of quantification in climate science, higher education, and health. Numbers may seem fragile--they are, after all, frequent objects of obfuscation or outright denial--but they have also never been more influential in our society, figuring into everything from college rankings to vaccine efficacy rates. This timely collection by a diverse group of humanists and social scientists challenges undue reverence or skepticism toward quantification and shows how it can be a force for good despite its many abuses. Limits of the Numerical focuses on quantification in several contexts: the role of numerical estimates and targets in explaining and planning for climate change; the quantification of outcomes in teaching and research; and numbers representing health, the effectiveness of medical interventions, and well-being more broadly. The authors complicate our understanding of these numbers, uncovering, for example, epistemic problems with some core numbers in climate science. But their theme is less the problems revealed by case studies than the methodological issues common to them all. This volume shows the many ways that qualitative and quantitative approaches can productively interact--how the limits of the numerical can be overcome through equitable partnerships with historical, institutional, and philosophical analysis.

Author: Martin Paul Eve
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198850484
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
A comprehensive overview into digital literary studies that equips readers to navigate the difficult contentions in this space. The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of 'the literary' has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimes rival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communication looking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading. You may have heard of the digital humanities--and what you may have heard may not have been good. Yet like an oncoming storm, the relentless growth of the use of digital methods for the study of literature seems inevitable. This book gives an insight into the ways in which digital approaches can be used to study literature and the ways in which humanistic study can be used to explore digital literature. Examining its subject across the axes of authorship, space, and visualization, maps and place, distance and history, and ethical approaches to the digital humanities, this book introduces newcomers to the topic while also offering plenty for seasoned digital humanities pros. Combining original research with third-party case studies and examples, this book will appeal both to students and researchers across all levels who wish to learn about digital literary studies.

Author: Brian Croxall
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452969523
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Exploring how DH shapes and is in turn shaped by the classroom How has the field of digital humanities (DH) changed as it has moved from the corners of academic research into the classroom? And how has our DH praxis evolved through interactions with our students? This timely volume explores how DH is taught and what that reveals about the field of DH. While institutions are formally integrating DH into the curriculum and granting degrees, many instructors are still almost as new to DH as their students. As colleagues continue to ask what digital humanities is, we have the opportunity to answer them in terms of how we teach DH. The contributors to What We Teach When We Teach DH represent a wide range of disciplines, including literary and cultural studies, history, art history, philosophy, and library science. Their essays are organized around four critical topics at the heart of DH pedagogy: teachers, students, classrooms, and collaborations. This book highlights how DH can transform learning across a vast array of curricular structures, institutions, and education levels, from high schools and small liberal arts colleges to research-intensive institutions and postgraduate professional development programs. Contributors: Kathi Inman Berens, Portland State U; Jing Chen, Nanjing U; Lauren Coats, Louisiana State U; Scott Cohen, Stonehill College; Laquana Cooke, West Chester U; Rebecca Frost Davis, St. Edward’s U; Catherine DeRose; Quinn Dombrowski, Stanford U; Andrew Famiglietti, West Chester U; Jonathan D. Fitzgerald, Regis College; Emily Gilliland Grover, Notre Dame de Sion High School; Gabriel Hankins, Clemson U; Katherine D. Harris, San José State U; Jacob Heil, Davidson College; Elizabeth Hopwood, Loyola U Chicago; Hannah L. Jacobs, Duke U; Alix Keener, Stanford U; Alison Langmead, U of Pittsburgh; Sheila Liming, Champlain College; Emily McGinn, Princeton U; Nirmala Menon, Indian Institute of Technology; James O’Sullivan, U College Cork; Harvey Quamen, U of Alberta; Lisa Marie Rhody, CUNY Graduate Center; Kyle Roberts, Congregational Library and Archives; W. Russell Robinson, Alabama State U; Chelcie Juliet Rowell, Tufts U; Dibyadyuti Roy, U of Leeds; Asiel Sepúlveda, Simmons U; Andie Silva, York College, CUNY; Victoria Szabo, Duke U; Lik Hang Tsui, City U of Hong Kong; Annette Vee, U of Pittsburgh; Brandon Walsh, U of Virginia; Kalle Westerling, The British Library; Kathryn Wymer, North Carolina Central U; Claudia E. Zapata, UCLA; Benjun Zhu, Peking U. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.

Author: Paul Crosthwaite
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198891814
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Speculative Time: American Literature in an Age of Crisis examines how a climate of financial and economic speculation and disaster shaped the literary culture of the United States in the early to mid-twentieth century. It argues that speculation's risk-laden and crisis-prone temporalities had major impacts on writing in the period, as well as on important aspects of visual representation. The conceptions of time-and especially futurity-arising from the theory and practice of speculation provided crucial models for writers' and other artists' aesthetic, intellectual, and political concerns and strategies. The attractions and dangers of speculation were most spectacularly apparent in the period's pivotal economic event: the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The book offers an innovative account of how the speculative boom and bust of the "Roaring Twenties" affected literary and cultural production in the United States. It situates the stock market gyrations of the 1920s and 1930s within a wider culture of speculation that was profoundly shaped by, but extended well beyond, the brokerages and trading floors of Wall Street. The early to mid-twentieth century was a “speculative time,” an age characterized by leaps of economic, political, intellectual, and literary speculation; and the notion of speculative time provides a means of understanding the period's characteristic temporal modes and textures, as evident in work by figures including F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Nathan Asch, William Faulkner, Federico García Lorca, James N. Rosenberg, Margaret Bourke-White, Archibald MacLeish, Christina Stead, Claude McKay, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison.

Author: Rachael Scarborough King
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350242306
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Bringing together an exciting group of knowledge workers, scholars and activists from across fields, this book revisits a foundational question of the Enlightenment: what is “the last or furthest end of knowledge”? It is a book about why we do what we do, and how we might know when we are done. In the reorganization of knowledge that characterized the Enlightenment, disciplines were conceived as having particular “ends,” both in terms of purposes and end-points. As we experience an ongoing shift to the knowledge economy of the Information Age, this collection asks whether we still conceptualize knowledge in this way. Does an individual discipline have both an inherent purpose and a natural endpoint? What do an experiment on a fruit fly, a reading of a poem, and the writing of a line of code have in common? Focusing on areas as diverse as AI; biology; Black studies; literary studies; physics; political activism; and the concept of disciplinarity itself, contributors uncover a life after disciplinarity for subjects that face immediate threats to the structure if not the substance of their contributions. These essays – whether reflective, historical, eulogistic, or polemical – chart a vital and necessary course towards the reorganization of knowledge production as a whole.

Author: Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478023635
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
In Code Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan reconstructs how Progressive Era technocracy as well as crises of industrial democracy and colonialism shaped early accounts of cybernetics and digital media by theorists including Norbert Wiener, Warren Weaver, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Luce Irigaray. His analysis casts light on how media-practical research forged common epistemic cause in programs that stretched from 1930s interwar computing at MIT and eugenics to the proliferation of seminars and laboratories in 1960s Paris. This mobilization ushered forth new fields of study such as structural anthropology, family therapy, and literary semiology while forming enduring intellectual affinities between the humanities and informatics. With Code, Geoghegan offers a new history of French theory and the digital humanities as transcontinental and political endeavors linking interwar colonial ethnography in Dutch Bali to French sciences in the throes of Cold War-era decolonization and modernization.