Compatibilities: Quantification and Literary Study

Date
Fri January 26th 2018, 5:15pm
Event Sponsor
Literary Lab
Location
Terrace Room of the Department of English (Margaret Jacks Hall, 4th floor)
Compatibilities: Quantification and Literary Study

On Friday, January 26, from 5:15 – 7:00, in the Terrace Room of the Department of English (Margaret Jacks Hall, 4th floor), the Literary Lab will host a roundtable conversation between special guests Amy Hungerford and Jonathan Kramnick, of Yale University, Hannah Walser, of the Harvard Society of Fellows, and Mark Algee-Hewitt, of the Stanford Literary Lab.

Our topic will be the relationship between Literary Studies and the Digital Humanities, specifically that associated with text mining or quantitative analysis. In what ways have we been successful in integrating the two fields to produce new methodologies for studying Literary Criticism and History? Where do the fault lines between the fields still exist and what work might be necessary to synthesize the methodologies of close reading and computation? And are there fundamental incompatibilities between the humanistic study of literature and the Digital Humanities that we may not be able to solve? With four very different perspectives, our roundtable participants will lay out the stakes of this compatibility and engage the audience in a larger conversation about the future(s) of the field.