Interest in the digital humanities continues to grow and Stanford scholars are leading the way. Two weeks ago, The New York Times featured a major Stanford collaboration in an article about the use of technology in liberal arts research. This week, the Stanford Report’s Cynthia Haven details the work being done by the Stanford Literature Lab.
Directed by former fellow Matthew Jockers (2006-07) and English and Comparative Literature professor Franco Moretti, the Literature Lab makes use of the vast digital archives now available to conduct quantitative analyses of literary texts. By analyzing the data rather than the text, scholars are able to see broader patterns in literary production. As Jockers puts it, they are conducting a form of “distant reading.”
Read the Report’s article “Non-consumptive research? Text mining? Welcome to the hotspot of humanities research at Stanford” for more about the research being conducted at the Literature Lab. Then read earlier coverage of Jockers’ and Moretti’s work in Marc Parry’s article, “The Humanities Go Google” (Chronicle of Higher Education), as well as in Amanda Zhang and Corrie Goldman’s piece, “Stanford Students Use Digital Tools to Analyze Classic Texts.”
Further information about the Lab and Jockers’ work in humanities computing and academic technology is available on Jockers’ blog.
