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Digitized archives and distant reading

The growing digitization of our textual and literary heritage has convinced many academics and observers of higher education that we are currently experiencing a renaissance in the Humanities. Some scholars argue that this mass of data is profoundly changing the methodological toolbox of a field whose scholarship is traditionally based on close reading and interpretation of texts. Digitization has rendered novels, plays, poems and historical texts open to forms of statistical analysis and visualization methods previously unavailable to these objects. As a result, this “digital turn” is creating a vivid debate within the Humanities about the effects that the use of algorithms might have on the interpretation, understanding and teaching of literature and history.

Event, Research Seminar

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ENSCI-les Ateliers, 48 rue Sabin, 75011 Paris.

Abstract

The growing digitization of our textual and literary heritage has convinced many academics and observers of higher education that we are currently experiencing a renaissance in the Humanities. Some scholars argue that this mass of data is profoundly changing the methodological toolbox of a field whose scholarship is traditionally based on close reading and interpretation of texts. Digitization has rendered novels, plays, poems and historical texts open to forms of statistical analysis and visualization methods previously unavailable to these objects. As a result, this “digital turn” is creating a vivid debate within the Humanities about the effects that the use of algorithms might have on the interpretation, understanding and teaching of literature and history.