Tag: digital humanities

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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 process of mapping events from my memoir showed me just how important the visualization of geographical locations really is in understanding the text. My StoryMap helped me become more familiar with not only the text in my memoirs but also with the person the text was about: Benigna Briand. Mapping this memoir, I saw Benigna’s story come to life. As Bodenhamer wrote, my memoir served as a “mediator between us and the world it represents, and the two were brought together when mapped (Bodenhamer 25). Mapping brings you to this next level of understanding, especially in the content I transcribed, because it makes you familiar with the places mentioned in the memoir. Because all of my memoir took place in England, I had no sense of the geographical relativity of the places mentioned.

As stated by Bodenhamer, an artifact, such as a memoir, anchored in space (geographical/ mapping), creates a unique view and dynamic memory (Bodenhamer 27 & 28). Likewise, putting this artifact, or Briand’s memoir, into space through a StoryMap brings on a whole new and unique perspective. Bodenhamer also points out that deep mapping immerses the user into a virtual world of emotions based on the information mapped/ known (Bodenhamer 28). When mapping my memoir, I became enthralled in the world that was created. It was like I was there for specific events in Benigna Briand’s life. Mapping also made me realize certain geographical attributes from my memoir and the high importance of specific events. For instance, I knew that Benigna Briand was baptized in a lake, What I didn’t know was how far this lake was from Benigna’s home. The journey to this lake to get baptized had to have taken place over several days, and mapping this event showed me just how important it must’ve been in Benigna’s life to travel such a great distance. Also, I knew that Benigna traveled from Bath to Bristol every Sunday for 6 years in order to attend religious ceremonies, braving any poor weather or dangers that were on the way. Until mapping this event, I didn’t realize how far Bristol is from Bath, showing me just how dedicated Benigna was to the Moravian Society.

When creating a story to map, I decided to include all important events in the life of Benigna Briand, regardless of their geogrpahical location. Even if two consecutive events occurred in the same location, I mapped it. I did this because I wanted my map to not only show the many places travelled in my memoir but also the places in which several events took place. The impact that this has on the story as a whole, in my opinion, is large; mapping in this way also shows the importance of certain locations  to the life of the person that is being mapped. For instance, in my story there are several events that take place in Lyneham of Wiltshire because that is where Benigna spent most of her early life, making it a very significant location. This is also seen in Bath, the city in which Benigna and her husband settled down and started a family and Benigna ulitmately passed away.

[iframe src=”https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/8fff9ff31fd20510f3940093127b8ecd/bethlehem-benigna-briand/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 #2

Blog #2

Research Question: How do the frequent terms within voyant relate to the theme of John Willey’s memoir?

 

The memoir Rosemary, Jacob, and I transcribed is written by John Willey’s children after his death. Willey was a honorable servant of the Lord in the Brn Church. Willey comes from a religious family; his father, brothers, and himself all held active roles in the Church. Unfortunately, John Willey’s mother passed away when he was just six years old. But Willey’s courage and love allowed him to still live a great and loving life. Willey’s eventual passion for religion at 21 years old gave him the faith and love for something greater than himself. Willey attended and taught at religious schools, growing love for his pupils. Eventually, Willey was given the honor of becoming a minister, one of his goals in life. Later, Willey marries a teacher he worked with, named Susan Hutton, whom Willey had four children with. One of his daughters passed away in her early infancy. Despite a long and happy life, Willey suffered through medical issues his last six years prior to death. Most of his vital organs were affected, and Willey was mostly unable to commit to his duty to the church. He maintained a positive outlook on life through his suffering. Willey was still extremely faithful and believed everything would workout well. All he wanted to do was get back to his duty as a minister. The memoir ends with Willey’s family comforting him through song as he passes away. Willey and his family maintain positive up through his death, believing he is leaving his suffering to go be happy with the Lord. Overall, the memoir of John Willey is an excellent story of a man who lived an honorable life as a servant to his Lord, and eventually had his spirits lifted to be with the Lord.

 

The Willey memoir consists of 3,519 words in total. Of those words, 1,106 were described as unique word forms, displaying the complexity of Willey’s texts. Additionally, Willey’s memoir seems to have a pretty standard sentence structure to todays writing, considering the average sentence length of 33.5 words. Through using Whitley’s tool described as distant reading, I was able to see the key patterns emerging in Willey’s text. For example, illey’s frequently appearing words are years, time, great, Lord, life, love and Jesus. This leads me to believe that Willey lived a happy life, filled with faith. Through comparing Samuel Tippett’s memoir with Willey’s on voyant, there are some clear patterns emerging across their lives. For example, both these memoirs are filled with religion. Common words emerge, like Lord and savior, clearly portraying both these men’s passions toward religion. Additionally, love is a word appearing in both texts, perhaps showing that their faith towards religion promoted a sense of love in their lives. Overall, through examining Willey’s and Tippett’s texts, and skimming through a bunch more, there is a clear sense of a passion towards religion in these memoirs. This is very interesting, considering the different locations and time periods these men lived their lives.

 

Visualization, is a tool especially prevalent on voyant, which was introduced to me by the Whitley reading. Almost every tool I worked with on voyant has some form of visualization to it. For example, the cirrus is an excellent resource for compiling all the key terms. Then, using collocates is a great way to further examine which of those words often relate to each other. For example, I noticed that great and years often appeared near each other, as well as savior and Lord. This leads me to believe Willey had great years in his life and viewed his Lord as his savior.

 

Through examining voyant tools, as well as reading through the Willey text, my research question was clearly answered. There is a very clear connection between the frequently appearing words, and the common theme of Willey’s memoir. For example, the words like years, great, Lord, love and Jesus all clearly portray that Willey’s life was a happy one filled with religion. This is reflected in my reading, as Willey devoted his life to his religious workings and seemed to be happy with this choice. Willey also used his faith to maintain happiness in his suffering toward the end of his life. Similarly, Whitley explains how human brains are able to easily notice patterns in their reading. Interestingly, voyant tools put all those patterns in one place, allowing me to notice the same themes I picked up on while reading.