Author: Quinta Cinna

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final blog

Final Blog Post

Given the implications in the name of the course itself, “Humanities 100”, it was only inevitable that this class had a consistent theme of analyzing the effects of digital humanities on society. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out how drastically technology has changed the very world we live in today. For example, imagine the typical tourist wandering around the Big Apple. After maneuvering through the hordes of people glued to their cellphones, this tourist looks up and see the endless flashing monitors of Times Square. Finally, after a full day of festivities, this tourist finds his/her way back to their grandparents’ apartment who then proceed to complain how none of these fancy gadgets or screens even existed back in their generation. Needless to say, the world has experienced a technological explosion. The question is where did this sudden incorporation of technology derive from, and what are the consequences? A larger contributor is the creation of personal computing in the 1980s, which influenced people to view the world from a new lens. Society became quickly reliant on the internet with audio, visual, and graphical capabilities. Thus with due time, the field of digital humanities was created. The digital humanities are changing a world in which knowledge was taught through texts and stationary pictures and progressing to a world that produces and organizes knowledge through graphic designs and more. However, what is the advantage of implementing these graphics and visualizations towards internalizing text compared to traditional literature?

In his article “Visualizing the Archive”, Edward Whitley reflects upon how the human brain processes information. “Humans are quite adept at perceptual visual cues and recognizing subtle shape differences. In fact, it has been shown that humans can distinguish shape during the pre-attentive psychophysical process” (Whitley, 193). This fact entails that human brains are pre-wired to process and visualize shapes. The digital humanities provide the capability to turn complex bodies of text into software that can process this information into an extensive amount of graphs and even identify patterns. Nonetheless, it’s necessary to point out that not one single method of representing data is superior in every aspect. There are still benefits to reverting to the use of standard reading. For example, it’s intuitive that closely reading the actual text is going to provide the most accurate summary of the text and its details. However, it’s when texts become too long that the amount of information any individual can process begins to plateau. Whitley refers to this phenomenon in his article as the bottleneck effect. Only so many details can be remembered before the brain loses concentration and reaches its limits. For this very reason, digital humanities are advantageous in the the sense that complex texts can be simplified to be processed to the natural tendencies of the brain.

To provide some context on the capabilities of digital visualization tools, let’s focus on my favorite platform: Voyant tools. Originally, my group’s assignment was to review a 40-page digital archive of text written by Esther Latrobe and then decipher the text back into modern day English. This memoir had enough length to where the bottleneck effect started to kick in. Especially cause this document was written in a style of cursive and writing style that was unfamiliar. At first, we read the text document in it’s entirely like any other story one would read. We were provided numerous details on the several hardships that Latrobe endured. However, when we inputted the text of the memoir into Voyant Tools, the overlying themes became clearly apparent.

The picture above colorfully depicts the most frequent terms of the Latrobe’s memoir. It was now clear how strong a role religion played in her life because some of the most frequent terms included “god”, “lord”, and “saviour”. As Whitley would agree, Voyant Tools adhered to our brains’ tendency to register shapes and patterns. We now understood just how much religion really meant to Latrobe. It was this realization that shaped the research question of our final project.

Our research question was: How did Esther Latrobe’s relationship with God affect her lifestyle, and help her recover from such illnesses and hardships? Tragically, she was exposed to many harsh realities. For example, her mother died when she was only 11 years old. Additionally, she suffered from two diseases that nearly killed her both times. Keep in mind that the 1800s lacked the medical technologies that are available to the present world. Therefore, many diseases were lethal. To give light to how lethal diseases were from this time period, consider the Cholera Pandemic of 1817-1824.

This outbreak occurred during Latrobe’s life, which took the lives of over 400,000. The screenshot above is a picture from our timeline on our website. It was a miracle that Latrobe was able to survive not one, but two severe illnesses. In fact, her physician made several comments regarding how she had a shockingly high pain tolerance. Our group concluded that it was most likely her drive to maintain a close relationship with her “Saviour” that enabled her to become resilient, even against all odds. Another effect of her devotion to religion was its influences for her to travel, which was no cheap affair. To give a specific example, when she married James Latrobe, she had to move to Ayr Scotland because James had been called to service at the congregation there. “We are inherently spatial beings: we live in a physical world and routinely use spatial concepts of distance and direction to navigate our way through it (Bodenhamer, p. 14). As Bodenhamer believes, space is more than just for historical action. Space is a significant product and determinant of change. It was through this constant traveling that shaped the rich character that Latrobe developed.

However, as our group mentioned in our timeline, she lived a short life of only 28 years, and she died to Ayr Scottland soon after her marriage and giving birth.

Post URL: https://latrobehumn100.blogs.bucknell.edu/wp-admin/customize.php

 

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Blog #5

Blog #5

The spatial humanities is a new field that combines both humanities and geography with conceptual space. This practice relies heavily on Geographic Information Systems to interpret data. “GIS is a seductive technology, a magic box capable of wondrous feats, and the images it constructs so effortlessly appeal to us in ways more subtle and powerful than words can” (Bodenhamer, p. 17). As consistent with the general theme of this class, the visualization tools that are given through GIS offer easy solutions to interpreting difficult and elongated texts or data. While text will intuitively provide a more thorough understanding of the information, understanding the material in its entirety can become difficult. An overflow of information is, in fact, detrimental towards internalizing the overall message. For this reason, Bodenhamer justifiably supports the use of GIS in the spatial humanities. This reason is that Geographic Information Systems have an “unparalleled ability to manage and visualize data within a spatial context that has led to a rediscovery of the power of the map” (Bodenhamer, p. 17).

Over history, certain places become more important due to the contextual events that are occurring. An individual’s time period within any geographical setting creates certain circumstances that he or she has to deal with. Therefore, the conditions of the environment gravely affect the life that person pursues. For example, consider the case of Esther Latrobe when she moved to Gracehill, Ireland. In the early 1800s, Ireland was experiencing the Evangelical Revival in which this region was 50 years behind the Church of England. As a consequence, society began to see more emphasis on religion. When Latrobe moved to Gracehill in the mid-1820s, she experienced this increased focus on religion. Such influence surely encouraged her to maintain her close relationship with God. A significant point revealed from mapping Latrobe’s memoir was her clear upbringing from high class. Within the few years she lived, Latrobe traveled far distances and visited different countries. Without the current age of airplanes and luxury cruise ships, traveling was no easy feat. Another revelation from the mapping process that can be found is the number of story points at each location. In my personal story map, I entered three points in Gracehill, Ireland. Therefore, it can be correctly inferred that this location was highly significant within Latrobe’s life. Not only did she spend many years teaching at a ladies boarding school there, but she both met and married her husband, James Latrobe, in Gracehill.

“We are inherently spatial beings: we live in a physical world and routinely use spatial concepts of distance and direction to navigate our way through it (Bodenhamer, p. 14). As Bodenhamer believes, space is more than just for historical action. Space is a significant product and determinant of change.

[iframe src=”https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/9ac892bb38ca23e9f07dee5ffa147b92/latrobes-storymap/index.html” frameborder=”0″ width=”100%” height=”800″][/iframe]

 

 

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Blog #4

In her article A rationale of digital documentary editions, Elena Pierazzo, a revered worker at the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College in London, reflects upon the question: are digital editions different from printed ones? At first glance to a citizen who has never worked in the fields of digital humanities, digital mediums seem to present the materials in the same manner as printed texts. However, Pierazza adamantly argues that “editions as we know them from print culture are substantially different from the ones we find in a digital medium” (Pierazza).

 

A first major factor to consider is the price of publication. “In a digital environment, the cost of publication (though not necessarily that of production) has been remarkably reduced and therefore an increasing number of such editions are now being published on the web” (Pierazza). Consider the efficiency of publishing digitally. Once the product has an online URL, the reader can paste this URL and find the desired edition through Google in the blink of an eye. A person does not need paper or ink for an edition that can be printed through the internet.

 

“The concept of transcription largely consists in a systematic program of selective alteration coupled with selective preservation of information” (Pierazza). Pierazza’s article discusses Michael Sperberg-McQueens’s declaration that there is an infinite set of facts related to any work being edited. This statement brings up a traditional argument regarding the pros and cons of graphical analysis and standard literature. Reading texts directly from an article encourages the phenomenon of close reading. The reader is forced to pay closer attention to the minute details mentioned by the writer. However, when texts become long and concepts become more sophisticated, the sheer amount of intricate details detract from the overall point of the text. The read thus experiences a bottleneck effect; the human brain can only process a finite amount of information within a given moment. For this reason, digital editions offer a better alternative to print culture. Digital editions allow an editor to select what relevant context needs to be altered and what information is arbitrary. Although Pierazza claims how digital editions are superior, she never claimed that this process of editing was easy.

 

We have been using TEI-compliant XML markup to edit our transcriptions as a collaborative group effort. Our group specifically worked on our previous transcription of Esther Latrobe’s memoir. The way the software that we used worked was based on a tagging system. You would highlight the desired word or phrase that you wanted to tag and then categorize it from the following list: person, place, organization, date, emotion, event, health, or object

 

 

The picture above displays how the program compiles a list of every tag in a convenient and organized manner. This organization adheres kindly to the brain’s tendency to recognize patterns. Personally, the list of tags related our transcription back to Latrobe’s main theme of religion. Our most common tag was a person. Since God was the most important “person” in Latrobe’s life, our group decided to make any mention of the lord considered to be a tag as a person. The sheer amount of “persons” we tagged shows Latrobe’s intimate connection with God. However, the process of tagging this document proved harder than expected.

 

Although our group was filled with brilliant people, not all brilliant minds can think alike. By this statement, I mean that we had to write down laws specifying what were the qualifications that determined each tag. 

 

 

Even though the picture above is unfortunately blurry, it reflected upon a problem within tagging that my group encountered. Due to the fact that Latrobe lived in a family of six children, her memoir uses the word “brother” a lot. However, some of the times the word “brother” would be capitalized. We tagged the “brother”s that were capitalized and did not tag the ones that were not. In this decision, we made any proper nouns considered to be a person.

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Blog #3

Blog #3

The concept of the timeline is a new phenomenon. In fact, it was only created around 250 years ago. Ancient and medieval historians had their own methods of representing chronology: the chronological table. However, now “our idea of time is so wrapped up with the metaphor of the line that taking them apart seems virtually impossible” (Grafton, p. 13). Presently, lines are more common than often perceived. For example, even in an analog clock, the hour and minute hands trace lines through space. The fact that these lines are circular is irrelevant; they are lines regardless. So what are the advantages of using a timeline?

“History, indeed is the body, but chronologie the soul of historical knowledge; for history without chronologie, or a relation of things past, without mentioning the times in which they were acted, is like a lump or embryo without articulation, or a carcass without life” (Grafton, p. 19). In his book “Cartographies of Time”, Anthony Grafton discusses how history deals with stories but chronology deals with facts. These aspects of time work symbiotically; without one or the other, a time period is not described to its fullest potential. For this reason, a simple line can be much more efficient in representing information than initially anticipated. Especially considering the fact that “Graphic representation is among our most important tools for organizing information” (Grafton, p. 10).

Using a timeline was helpful in painting a larger picture in understanding the general themes of Esther Latrobe’s memoir. A recurring theme was the suffering through diseases. The picture below represents the time period of a cholera epidemic. From this portion of the timeline, we can see how the dates 1817-1824 (when the epidemic occurred) were relevant to Latrobe because she lived through this time period. In this manner, the timeline provides contextual evidence from a single glance.

The picture below describes how from 1820-1830 she was not only educated but also became a teacher at a ladies boarding school in Ireland. From this information, we can conclude that she came from at least middle class because education was more rare for a female in this time period