TEXTUAL ANALYSIS AND DATA VISUALIZATION

TOOLS FOR THE CLASSROOMDigital Humanities Faculty Workshop Series

Fall 2017

Dr. Stephen GrandchampVisiting Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities

September 27, 2017

Agenda• DefinitionofTextualAnalysisandDataVisualization

• TheoryofTextualAnalysisandDataVisualization

• Recap:VoyantTools

• Example:Lexos

• Activity

• Questions/Discussion

Definitions• TextualAnalysis• theprocessofexamininglargeamountsofwordswithabroadviewinordertoidentifykeymomentsorinterestingtrends

• DataVisualization• theprocessbywhichtheresultsoftextualanalysisarepresentedinvisualform(forinstance:chartsandgraphs)

Traditionally,humanitiesscholarscarryingoutresearchonaspecificormultipleliterarywork(s)areinterestedintheanalysisofrelatedtextsortextpassages.Butthedigitalagehasopenedpossibilitiesforthescholarstoenhancetheirtraditionalworkflows.Enabledbydigitizationprojects,humanitiesscholarscannowadaysreachavastamountofdigitizedtextsthroughwebportalssuchasGoogleBooksandInternetArchive…Thisshiftfromreadingasinglebook“onpaper”tothepossibilityofbrowsingmanydigitaltextsisoneoftheoriginsandprincipalpillarsofthedigitalhumanitiesdomain.

-S.Jänicke,G.Franzini,M.F.Cheema,andG.Scheuermann“OnCloseandDistantReadinginDigitalHumanities:ASurveyandFutureChallenges”

Whattransformeddisciplinarycoherencemightliterarystudiesembrace?Hereisasuggestion:literarystudiesteachesliteraciesacrossarangeofmediaforms,includingprintanddigital,andfocusesoninterpretationandanalysisofpatterns,meaning,andcontextthroughclose,hyper-,andmachinereadingpractices.Readinghasalwaysbeenconstitutedthroughcomplexanddiversepractices.Nowitistimetorethinkwhatreadingisandhowitworksintherichmixturesofwordsandimages,soundsandanimations,graphicsandlettersthatconstitutetheenvironmentsoftwenty-first-centuryliteracies.

-N.KatherineHayles“HowWeRead:Close,Hyper,Machine”

Voyant Tools• Open-sourceapplication

• Freedesktopversion

• Freeweb-basedversion

• Severaltoolsforanalysisofcorpus

• Severalmethodsofvisualization

• Bestforsmallnumberoftexts(2-3full-lengthwords)

• Accessibleat:voyant-tools.org

Lexos• UsefultoolforlexicalanalysisdevelopedbyWheatonCollege

• Visualization-friendly

• Download-friendly

• Easyforcomparisonofseveraldocuments

• Suitableforstudentuseinblendedapproachwithclosereading

Activity• Gotogutenberg.org

• Searchforpre-20th centurybook

• Click“PlainTextUTF-8”

• Click“File”and“SavePageAs”

• SavetoDesktopinPlainText(.txt)format

• Openanddeleteintroductoryandconcludinginformation

• Click“File”and“Save”

Activity• Dragintoboxinlexos.wheatoncollege.edu

• Google”stopwordstxt”

• ClickPrincetonlink

• Click“Edit”andthen“SelectAll”

• Click“Edit”andthen“Copy”

• PasteintoStopWordboxonlexos.wheatoncollege.edu

• Playwiththetoolsweexplored

COLLABORATIVE ARCHIVES OF STUDENT WORK

Wednesday, October 11, 201712 pm

Ames 129Lunch Provided

NEXT WORKSHOP