International Visitor Reflects on Thailand’s Misrule by Law

In an article for the Wall Street Journal, former FSI-Stanford Humanities Center International Visitor Thitinan Pongsudhirak questions Thailand’s return to the rule of law and argues that the judicial and military establishment are skewing the playing field in favor of the ruling party. Read the full article»

Thitinan Pongsudhirak is professor of international political economy and director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

Stanford Literature Lab “Quantifies” the Humanities

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.