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ISSN 1938-4122
Announcements
DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly
2022 16.2
Articles
Linked data from TEI (LIFT): A Teaching Tool for
TEI to Linked Data Transformation
Francesca Giovannetti, University of Bologna; Francesca Tomasi, University of Bologna
Abstract
[en]
The purpose of this paper is to introduce Linked data from
TEI (LIFT), an open source tool written as a set of Python scripts
for generating linked data from TEI-encoded texts. LIFT’s goal is to walk users
through the transformation process from TEI to linked data step by step, as well
as to promote a better understanding of the theoretical and methodological
aspects that underpin the transformation. LIFT was created in the context of the
University of Bologna’s Master Degree in Digital Humanities and Digital
Knowledge as a teaching tool for students encountering linked open data for the
first time as a method of organizing and publishing cultural knowledge and,
specifically, digital scholarly editions on the web in a perspective of data
integration.
Universal
Dependencies and Author Attribution of Short Texts with Syntax Alone
Robert Gorman, Department of Classics and Religious Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Abstract
[en]
Improving methods of stylometrics and classification so that they give good results
with small texts is the focus of much research in the digital humanities and in the
NLP community more generally. Recent work has suggested
that an approach using combinations of shallow and deep morpho-syntactic information
can be quite successful. But because the data in that study were taken from hand
annotated dependency treebanks, the wider applicability of such an approach remains
in question. The present paper seeks to answer this question by using
machine-generated morphological and syntactic annotations as the basis for a
closed-set classification experiment. Texts were parsed according to the Universal
Dependency schema using the “udpipe” package for R. Experiments were carried out
on data from several languages covering a range of morphological complexity. To limit
confounders, consideration of vocabulary was excluded. Results were quite promising,
and, not surprisingly, a more complex morphology correlates with better accuracy
(e.g., 100-token texts in Polish: 88% correct; 100-token texts in English: 74%).The
method presented here has particular advantages for stylometrics as practiced in
literary analysis and other fields in the humanities. The Universal Dependency
annotation categories are generally similar to those used in traditional grammars.
Thus, the variables which serve to distinguish the style of a given author are
relatively easier to interpret and understand than, for example, are character
n-grams or function words. This fact, combined with the availability of easy-to-use
dependency parsers, opens up the study of a syntax-centered stylometrics to persons
with a wide range of expertise. Even students at the early stages of their studies
can identify and investigate the morpho-syntactic “signature” of a particular
author. Therefore, the characterization of texts based on computational annotation of
this type deserves a place in classification studies because of its combination of
good results and good interpretability.
The Making and
Re-making of The Philadelphia Negro
Stephanie Boddie, Baylor University, Diana R. Garland School of Social Work, the School of Education, and the George W. Truett Seminary and University of South Africa, Institute for Gender Studies; Amy Hillier, University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice
Abstract
[en]
This article sheds light on the methods and meaning of W. E. B. Du Bois’ 1899 study
of the everyday lives of Black residents of Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward. It does so
by juxtaposing the way Du Bois conducted his research with our contemporary efforts
to recover, recreate, and preserve The Philadelphia
Negro using digital and geospatial technologies to document historical and
contemporary patterns relating to race and class. Beginning with an exploration of
primary source documents that provide new details about how Du Bois went about his
original research, we focus on the humanities and social science research methods
that he employed. Of note is the color-coded parcel-level map Du Bois created to
illustrate Black social class status, which reflected both the influence of the
Social Survey Movement and Du Bois’ efforts to present a new understanding of the
color line. His findings were groundbreaking, considering that most white scientists
of his time assumed Black people to be biologically inferior and socially homogeneous.
Instead, he documented the variability and social stratification within
Philadelphia’s Black population and the systematic exclusion they faced because of
anti-Black racism. Our ongoing project — The WARD: Race and Class
in Du Bois’ Seventh Ward, which seeks to recreate Du Bois’ study —
includes new technologies and participatory research methods that engage high school
and college students. In-depth, intergenerational oral histories conducted with
students also add a new dimension to this work and complement our high school
curriculum, which incorporates online mapping, documentaries, a board game, a walking
tour, and a mural to engage others to create their own primary sources. This research
provides a historical context for today’s racial tensions as we seek new ways to
address the 21st century color line.
Scholarly Primitives of Scholarly Meetings: A
DH-Inspired Exploration of the Virtual Incunabular in the Time of COVID
19
Jennifer Edmond, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; Nicole Basaraba, Maastricht University, the Netherlands; Michelle Doran, Centre for Digital Humanities, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; Vicky Garnett, DARIAH-EU; Courtney Helen Grile, School of Creative Arts, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; Eliza Papaki, DARIAH-EU; Erszébet Toth-Czifra, DARIAH-EU
Abstract
[en]
This article documents the theoretical and practical considerations underpinning
the COVID-19-inspired digital humanities event: “The
Scholarly Primitives of Scholarly Meetings.” Drawing from both the
long tradition of work on scholarly primitives as well as the rush of new work
that appeared in the early months of 2020, the event described here was designed
as both an exercise in critical making and a response to the constraints of the
virtual incunabular state so many organisations found themselves in, attempting
to recreate their planned face-to-face meetings in virtual formats without due
consideration of the affordances and constraints of each context. As a
structurally distributed organisation, the DARIAH European Research
Infrastructure as event host was able to bring its experience of virtual
interaction to the recosideration of these challenges, but also the sensitivity
to research processes and practices that is central to our positioning in the
digital humanities. As such, the resulting model for a virtual event, realised
in May 2020 and described in this paper, was built upon a very self-conscious
set of considerations, meta-reflection, and goals regarding what we might
tacitly and could expect from a virtual event. The instruments designed to
deliver this, as well as their performance in practice, is documented alongside
consideration of what lessons the experience delivers about both virtual
meetings and more generally about the interactions of scholarly communities.
Rediscussing the
Political Struggle in the Light of Reform in Late 11th Century China under the View
of Digital Humanities
Wenyi Shang, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Winbin Huang, Department of Information Management, Peking University
Abstract
[en]
In late 11th century, a reform carried out by Wang Anshi (1021–1086) brought about
controversies and initiated a series of political struggles between factionalized
reformers and anti-reformers. The origin and nature of these factionalized struggles
have been discussed for a long time among scholars. In this paper, we discuss the
issue based on the literary and political relationships among people in the era of
the reform. First, two matrices are respectively constructed of the literary and
political relations among these people based on the data collected from CBDB (China
Biographical Database). Then a Poission-Gamma factorization model is adopted to
obtain the key factors of the matrices, and the Louvain Modularity algorithm is used
for community detection. The results show that people engaging in similar literary
pursuits were more likely to share political interests and people belonging to the
same literary groups were more likely to join in the same political groups,
suggesting a feature of “literati politics” which was prominent in 11th century
China. Ensuing discussions illustrate that people’s differing academic views indeed
played a shaping role in the formation and exacerbation of factionalized struggle,
for which the mechanism unfolded herein of “literati politics” was highly
responsible.
Automated Transcription of Non-Latin Script
Periodicals: A Case Study in the Ottoman Turkish Print Archive
Suphan Kirmizialtin, NYU Abu Dhabi; David Joseph Wrisley, NYU Abu Dhabi
Abstract
[en]
Our study discusses the automated transcription with deep learning methods of a
digital newspaper collection printed in a historical language, Arabic-script Ottoman
Turkish (OT), dating to the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century. We situate
OT text collections within a larger history of digitization of periodicals,
underscoring special challenges faced by Arabic script languages. Our paper approaches the question of automated transcription of non-Latin script languages, such
as OT, from the broader perspective of debates surrounding OCR use for historical
archives. In our study with OT, we have opted for training handwritten text
recognition (HTR) models that generate transcriptions in the left-to-right, Latin
writing system familiar to contemporary readers of Turkish, and not, as some scholars
may expect, in right-to-left Arabic script text. As a one-to-one correspondence
between the writing systems of OT and modern Turkish does not exist, we also discuss
approaches to transcription and the creation of ground truth and argue that the
challenges faced in the training of HTR models also draw into question
straightforward notions of transcription, especially where divergent writing systems
are involved. Finally, we reflect on potential domain bias of HTR models in other
historical languages exhibiting spatio-temporal variance as well as the significance
of working between writing systems for language communities that also have
experienced language reform and script change.
Stitching the
Fragmented: Feminist Maker Pedagogy and Immersive Technologies for Cultural
Learning
Mélanie Péron, University of Pennsylvania; Meaghan Moody, University of Rochester; Vickie Karasic, Bryn Mawr College
Abstract
[en]
To immerse and engage her learners in the particularly difficult topic of WWII Paris,
a French instructor, with assistance from the university libraries and digital
humanities lab, embarked upon distinct yet iterative digital projects that allowed
students to connect with course material through critical making. Starting with
digital mapping and moving to 360° virtual reality video projects, instructor,
librarians, and students stitched together fragments of the past to further their
collective experience of this historical period via immersive technology. Students’
work was founded upon feminist maker pedagogy and an ethic of care that allowed them
to step into others’ perspectives and preserve a cultural memory that future students
will build upon.
Varieties of Digital
Literary Studies: Micro, Macro, Meso'
Simone Murray, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University
Abstract
[en]
Digital literary studies constitutes a broad church. However, the field tends to
divide into, at one pole, quantitative, macro-level studies of historical literary
texts and, at the other pole, close-readings of individual born-digital literary
works, typically hyper-avant-garde in conception. There is, in practice, little
interplay between the two groupings. This article sketches a proposed ‘meso’ space
in between the two extant levels. Drawing on methods from book history, literary
sociology, cultural studies, and digital media theory, this mid-level approach examines digital technology’s role in recasting the institutions of contemporary mainstream literature:
the impact of powerful new digital intermediaries; the blurring of
author/reader/reviewer roles; and the continued existence of print artefacts within
online environments.
Detecting and
Characterising Transmission from Legacy Collection Catalogues
James Baker, University of Southampton; Andrew Salway, Sussex Humanities Lab, University of Sussex; Cynthia Roman, Lewis Walpole Library
Abstract
[en]
Catalogue records underpin the audit, curatorial, and public access functions of
collecting institutions. And they are relied upon by many humanities researchers, and
increasingly those looking to analyse collection holdings at scale. However, far from
being a neutral record of collection holdings, catalogues are the products of
cataloguing labour, often spanning many decades, and so are subject to various biases
and inequities. Understanding how collection catalogues are shaped by their histories
is then crucial for addressing many of the contemporary challenges faced by
cataloguing professionals and for enhancing their use in humanities research, as well
as for opening up new directions for historical research. This paper contributes a
computationally-based approach for generating new and important knowledge about
catalogues, in particular for investigating how a catalogue is shaped by an earlier
one. We contend that understanding at scale the transmission of records and style
from one catalogue to another requires the use of computational techniques to detect
and analyse the various ways in which transmission manifests across a catalogue.
Our case study concerns the transmission of Mary Dorothy George’s voice through time,
across space, and between mediums, from the 1930s to the late-twentieth century and
beyond, from the British Museum in London to the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington,
Connecticut, from printed volumes to networked digital data. It aims to show how
transmission happens, how it can be found, and how it can be characterised. Detecting
and characterising transmission is important because cataloguers like George are the
interlocuters between us and the pasts they described, legacy voices that refuse to
stay in their historical place, and whose raced, sexed, and classed influence on the
future should not go unchecked.
Our contributions are relevant both for historical research into catalogues and
cataloguing, knowledge organisation and infrastructure, and cultural organisations,
and for cataloguing practitioners seeking to rationalise/review their catalogues to
improve user experience, address systemic inequalities in object representation, and
develop best practice for future work. Furthermore, in broad terms, by contributing
to the generation of new knowledge about the biases/inequities of catalogues our work
will enable new and better research into the collections that catalogues
describe.
Worlds and Readers: Augmented Reality in Modern Polaxis
Anette Hagen, University of South-Eastern Norway; Elise Seip Tønnessen,
Abstract
[en]
This article presents a close reading of the augmented reality (AR) comic Modern Polaxis, which was created by Stuart Campbell.
Possible Worlds Theory was applied to discuss how fiction, which creates its own
possible worlds, integrates the additional layer(s) of AR into its storyworld. The
analysis additionally sheds light on the reader’s position and how the augmented
layer may affect the literary experience. We also discuss how the AR interface may
contribute to digital literature more generally.
Reviews
New Digital Worlds:
Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis and Pedagogy, Evanston
Onyekachi Henry Ibekwe, University of Nigeria
Abstract
[en]
Roopika Risam’s New Digital Worlds interrogates the
ongoing digitization of analog cultural records that came into existence during colonial
times. Risam contends that the processes which produced the initial analog records were
often animated by a mix of ethical egoism, racial bias and cultural caricature. Risam
proposes a way out by embracing decolonial computing: a spectrum of techniques that seek
to elevate historically-disadvantaged worldviews. Risam hopes to employ interventionist
data approaches to address the challenges brought to bear upon peoples continually
affected by colonial aggression.
Author Biographies
URL: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/preview/index.html
Last updated:
Comments: dhqinfo@digitalhumanities.org
Published by: The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations and The Association for Computers and the Humanities
Affiliated with: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities
DHQ has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Copyright 2005 -
Unless otherwise noted, the DHQ web site and all DHQ published content are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Individual articles may carry a more permissive license, as described in the footer for the individual article, and in the article’s metadata.
Last updated:
Comments: dhqinfo@digitalhumanities.org
Published by: The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations and The Association for Computers and the Humanities
Affiliated with: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities
DHQ has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Copyright 2005 -
Unless otherwise noted, the DHQ web site and all DHQ published content are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Individual articles may carry a more permissive license, as described in the footer for the individual article, and in the article’s metadata.
