Repository for spring term 2023 Computational Comparative Literature course.
Here you can find the notebooks accompanying the Computational Comparative Literature course, taught at Dartmouth College in spring 2023.
There are around 7,000 languages spoken across the world, yet only 500 of these are used in the digital world and even fewer are supported by fundamental digital infrastructures. Computational methods for analyzing language are being implemented across a growing range of domains, but do those methods work equally well for all types of languages and texts? And how can these methods be combined with existing ways of reading to illuminate how language works, what we can do with language, and what language does to us? In this course, we will apply insights from cultural studies and comparative literature to investigate how history, language, and culture shape our digital practices. We will develop a comparative and cultural critical perspective on digitization and text analysis practices as we learn about and contrast different methods of analyzing modern languages and literatures. No prior experience of programming, statistics or literary theory and criticism is expected.
Week 1: Introduction: Diversity in Digital Culture
T 03/28 Computation in the Media across Time and Cultures
Th 03/30 Digital Imperialism
Week 2: Formulating Questions I: Comparative and Cultural Criticism
T 04/04 Frames of Reading: Comparative Histories of Digital Culture
Th 04/06 Frames of Reading: Feminist and Intersectional Approaches to Digital Culture
Week 3: Formulating Questions II: Language Analysis
T 04/11 Words and Worlds: Language, Power and the Power of Language
Th 04/13 A Unique Kind of Data? What can we Learn from Analyzing Language
Week 4: Gathering the Corpus I
T 04/18 The Politics of Digitization: Digital Representation of Text and Language
Th 04/20 Search and Selection
Week 5: Gathering the Corpus II
T 04/25 Corpus study session at the Jones Media Center
Th 04/27 Introduction to Literary Text Analysis
Week 6: Gathering the Corpus III
Week 7: Text Analysis and Interpretation I
T 05/09 Genres: Literary Analysis of Non-Literary Texts
Th 05/11 Introduction to Computational Text Analysis
Week 8: Text Analysis and Interpretation II
T 05/16 Words: Frequent Words, Keywords, Distinctive Words
Th 05/18 Words and their Neighbors: Collocations and Vectors
Week 9: Text Analysis and Interpretation III
T 05/23 Words as Patterns: Topic Modeling
Th 05/25 Combining Different Modes of Reading: Writing up Interpretations
Week 10: Conclusion
T 05/30 Wrap up and Peer-review study session