Tag: memoir

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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: Visualization

A map is a diagram of collection of data showing the spatial distribution of something and the relative positions of its components. There is a tremendous amount of data embedded into maps that can be accessed by analyzing them.  As mentioned in the Bodenhamer reading, “we are drawn to issues of meaning, and space offers a way to understand fundamentally how we order our world to work” (Bodenhamer 14). Where a particular feature on a map is positioned matters. Its position and relationship to other features demonstrates what it important. I was able to utilize the spatial distance between points on the map to gain more information.

The map I created provided a spatial representation of a narrative because it was telling the story of one particular person. Specifically mapping Harriet Lees’ memoir has demonstrated how Harriet Lees spent the majority of her life and how she made her journey to Leamington in attempt to improve her health. Furthermore, through the Moravian Lives website and creating my map, I was able to see where other Moravians, specifically women, at the time lived. I was able to get a better understanding about Harriet Lees because I discovered what Moravian women at the time did and what their purpose in the church was. Furthermore, I was able to see how important historical events that occurred in Great Britain during the course of Harriet Lees’ life, affected where Moravians, specifically Harriet Lees lived. Even though London was the central hub for Moravians in the past, during 1811-1842 (the years Harriet Lees was alive for) the greatest number of Moravian women, whose information was in the archives, lived in Bristol and not London. I realized that this was because Bristol was a huge port on the slave trade, so there was a booming economy there. Bristol is much closer to where Harriet Lees lived, so it is very possible that she interacted with the members of the Congregation in Bristol. This directly relates to Bodenhamer’s point that “spaces are not simply the setting for historical action but are a significant product and determinant of change” (Bodenhamer 16). Because of events occurring at the time, the central location for Moravians changed because they followed the thriving economy. Mapping Harriet Lees’ life taught me more about the life of a Moravian woman at the time. The places I mapped were Woodford cum Membris, The Moravian Church in Leominster, The Moravian Church in Bristol, female Moravians in Bristol during Harriet Lees’ life, Moravian women who were in Leominster at some point during Harriet Lees’ life, and The Leamington Spa in Leamington. The specific locations plotted on the map proved my past opinion that religion was extremely important to Harriet Lees as the majority of the places plotted were churches. The spatial difference between Leominster and Woodford Cum Membris reflects not only a physical movement, but represents the change in her religion.  I was also able to gain a better understanding of events and situations that Harriet Lees may have faced throughout her life. As mentioned in the Bodenhamer reading, “human activity is about space and time” and creating the map on Storymap.js “provided a way to manage, relate, and query events, as well as to visualize them” (Bodenhamer 22). Through the map, I was able to track Harriet Lees’ activity and understand more about her.

[iframe src=”https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/ed09ff7b72d83b28d703a06b246fc922/harriet-lees/index.html” frameborder=”0″ width=”100%” height=”800″][/iframe]

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Uncategorized

Blog #2

For our transcription project, we transcribed a memoir written by Elizabeth Grundy.  She wrote about her life, and how her mother died when she was young. She also mentioned how when she was married her husband died as well.  After this, her son, William, then died. She writes this memoir to tell us her difficult life and how she struggled to continue her belief in God and her faith.  My group and I transcribed her whole memoir, and throughout our process, we used Voyant tools to see how the words in the document are used and their frequency. We came up with a research question, and ours is, “How does the frequency of key terms change throughout the document?”  There are so many tools on Voyant that helped us answer this question. Three specific tools that we used that especially helped us were cirrus, streamgraph, and word tree. These three tools specialize on word frequency and that is why they were so accurate for our research. Cirrus is something that creates a word bubble based on the frequent words.  The bigger the words appear in the bubble, the most they appear in the document. This helps us to indicate the frequent words. In the Whitley reading, he also creates a cirrus called “Song of Myself”. He doesn’t call it a cirrus, he calls it a word cloud, but they are the exact same thing.  Below is an image of the cirrus that was created from our memoir words. 

The other two tools that we used that help us answer the other part of our question are stream graph and word tree.  Streamgraph shows the change of frequency for a specific word, throughout the whole document. This gives us the information we want by showing us the change throughout the memoir, instead of just in general. It also compares it to the other frequent words in that area of the document. For example, like in this quote, “Savior would raise you up even more;” she replied: “Do not keep me back, let me go freely; it will be best for me now; I want to be gone and to see my Dear Savior.”  You can see that Savior is used a lot in this certain part of the text, but right before this part, it isn’t used for a whole page. This shows how the key words change throughout the memoir. Similar to stream graph, in the Whitley reading, he mentions how he uses scatterplots to see the different patterns of data points on the different axises.  Below is an image of the streamgraph based off of the memoir.

The other tool, and the last one, that helped answer our question, was word tree, below. This tool shows the words that come before and after the key terms, or the collocate. 

This helps because it gives us the context of the key word, and it can even tell us when Elizabeth Grundy was saying at the point in the memoir.  Like in the Whitely reading, and in many other parts of writing, tools like these can be helpful for so many different things.

 

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Blog #2

Blog #2: Samuel Tippett

In this group project, we transcribed the writing of Samuel Tippett. Below is a summary of his writing.

Samuel Tippett was born in year 1711 in Bitton. From his mentions of wanting to die, he appears to be depressed. He mentions that he wishes he had died earlier in life and talks about how he will go to hell. His father died from alcohol consumption when he was young, and he was raised by a single mother. His mother was strict on him but allowed him to go play with other boys. He lied and said nasty words when he was young. He regrets not practicing religion when he was younger as it could have helped him become a better person from the beginning. When he was 10 years old, he got more and more corrupt as he started working at a coal pit. His mother wanted him to become an apprentice, but he did not want to leave. Tippett got married in 1736 and had eleven children. He went to Hannam Mount and learned from a preacher that Jesus Christ would accept and forgive anyone, including sinners like him. He started fasting multiple times each week and prayed about a dozen times each day in the name of Jesus. He saw Christ not only as his savior but also his best friend, making complaints to him. He saw himself as having no friends other than Christ as He was the only person that could satisfy his poor heart. He became a part of a group that would gather and pray. He had found happiness in religion. Tippett spent a lot of time with his family as he grew older. He still prayed daily but wanted to be closer to Christ, he needed Christ as his life drew closer to an end. He needed his best friend and wanted to spend the rest of his time with Him.

Religion and faith gave Tippett hope in life. Before he turned to religion, he saw himself as a bad person, a sinner, someone who deserved to go to hell. Once he started praying, once he turned to Christ, he saw himself as a much better person than he used to be. His faith gave him a new perspective in life. If Jesus could forgive someone with such a poor heart as him, then maybe his life was worth living. He wished he was born in the time of Jesus as he would do anything even die for Him. Religion allowed him to be a new much happier and a better person.

Since he did not use any periods, we were unable to correctly examine how many sentences he had but his vocabulary density is 0.209, meaning he used 2 unique words for every 10 words he wrote. His total word count came to be about 3,800 words. Since he did not continue his education, he does make many spelling mistakes. Using Voyant and the tools it provides, we were able to do distant reading that Whitley talked about. We are able to analyze words like we would numbers and data. We were able to use it to do spatial reading where we could find words and phrases and the patterns between them. This helped determine what Tippett’s intention and overall tone was for the writing. We used these digital tools to complement the old text to gain an understanding on the writing.

Click on the picture to view the Cirrus

Through this Cirrus, we can see that a few of his most frequent words are heart, times, time, love, Jesus and poor. As with most transcription done in class, it is not surprising that Jesus fell into this list. We know that Tippett became a religious man and changed himself. This tool just allows us to see his other most frequent words.

Click on the image to view the Collocates

The Collocates tool allows us to see words that were connected and most frequently used in the range of each other. He used “poor” and “heart” together many times to refer to himself. He used “love” and “Jesus” to show that he loved Jesus and in return he knew Jesus loved him, no matter how much he had sinned in the past.

Click on the image to view the Trends

If we look at this relative frequency trend, we can see similar patterns to ones we see in the two previous tools. We see that soon after he starts using “Jesus” or “Christ”, he starts to use “love”. We can see the trends of the frequency of the most frequent words. His usage of “time” or “times” does not appear to correlate with other words most frequent words, but they do appear with less used words.

We transcribed Samuel Tippett’s writing and digitalized it. Using this digital edition of the writing, we analyzed it to conclude that turning to religion turned Tippett’s life around. He became a happier person and seemed to have found a purpose in life being a follower of Christ.