In this course, we will survey theoretical reflections on ‘Distant Reading’ and then go on to consider the opportunities offered by these techniques in the practice of research as well as their limitations.
In addition, we will develop the skills necessary for the use of these techniques, focussing on specific tools for both rule and data-driven textual analysis.
Each student will formulate a research plan based on a question that can only be resolved, as a whole or in part, through the digital analysis of large-scale corpora. In developing this plan, students will work with the expertise and thematic focus central to other courses in their Research Master so as to allow for a comparison between the goals and the results of research conducted along the traditional lines of close reading and the new line of distant reading.
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In recent years new digital analytic techniques have generated much interest as well as debate among literary scholars. The concept ‘Distant Reading’, introduced by Franco Moretti, has served as a catalyst of these discussions and will also be the starting point of this course. What are the techniques that constitute ‘Distant Reading’, and what analytic power do they have? These techniques have been applied world-wide in research conducted not only by literary scholars but also by cultural historians and media scholars. These disciplines often share with literary studies an interest in conceptual shifts in discourse and in changing expressive styles. This course is therefore open not only to student in the RMAs Comparative Literary Studies and Nederlandse literatuur en cultuur, for whom it is compulsory, but also to those students from other RMA programmes interested in new ways of analysing textual cultures.
This course will not only discuss these topics in theory, but offer training in two of the most prominent tools and techniques currently used (topic modeling and stylometry).
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