This is the transcript of a paper I gave as part of the “Digital Scholarship in Action: Research” panel at CSRS (Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies)…
Tag: REED
This is the transcript of a long paper I gave as part of the “Digital Scholarship in Action: Research” panel at CSRS (Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies) in Calgary on May 30, 2016. The attendant PowerPoint is stored and indexed on the MLA Commons Open Repository Exchange, and is available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6CK59
“REED and the Prospect of Networked Data”
At the MLA in January I gave a short paper entitled “Data Envy” – a contemplation of my inferiority complex with regards to scholars who have massive corpora to work with – Moretti-sized data. I reflected on the fact that the type of research with which I’m usually involved relies on close reading of texts and maps – and at the very most I’ve been able to work with is 2,500 records. I’ll get back to that in a moment, but I’d just like to say that I ended that short talk with a provocation – one that I’d like to use as the jumping off point for this paper: in today’s DH environment, where big data and linked data are increasingly the focus of scholars looking for ways to extend their research questions through more expansive and complementary datasets, what is the role of the individual research project? Is its value now truly in its integration and association and aggregation with other datasets?
“Data Envy” at MLA 2016
Posted in Conferences, Digital Humanities, and Research
This is the transcript of the short paper I gave as part of the “Digital Scholarship in Action: Research” panel at MLA 2016 in January . The attendant PowerPoint is stored and indexed on the MLA Commons Open Repository Exchange, and is available here: https://commons.mla.org/deposits/item/mla:667/
“Data Envy: Or, maintaining one’s self-confidence as a digital humanist at a time when everyone seems to be talking about … Big Data”
SELF-CONSCIOUS: Perhaps I’m being overly self-conscious, but lately I’ve felt increasingly out of the loop in terms of DH discourse – namely because I don’t do big data. Or at least I don’t think I do. And I observe that discussions about DH invariably involve topic modeling and pattern recognition and linked data and large-scale data visualization and “bags of words”.
Asking Better Questions
Posted in Digital Humanities
The other night I had one of those eureka! moments that bring me joy and make me crazy. But mostly bring me joy.
As some of you know I’ve been trying to sort out how to track Queen’s Men touring practices in the 1580s by teasing information out of the Records of Early English Drama dataset and looking at it on maps. I had some early success – 1583 record scraps offered what looks like a split tour during the summer months. I’ve been pinning the record scraps to an ArcGIS online map (and a pretty crappy job I did of it, too) and explaining away the vagueness of my plotting because I don’t always have very specific geo references (aside from an extant guildhall here and there, for which I’m grateful.)
Settling In
Posted in Digital Humanities
Bucknell: Week One phase is now complete. It’s been exciting and exhausting and confusing and exilarating. There’s so much to do, and so many people to meet, and so many goals to set, and … I still can’t quite adjust to the feeling that the Bucknell DSC (both position and center) is a reality and not something I’ve wished into being. There were so many meet-and-greets this week that it was Friday before I was able to start to make sense of my notes.