Computational Literary Studies:
How To Do Research Responsibly

DH2024 pre-conference workshop
organized by SIG-DLS and CLS INFRA

2024-05-08

general info

Organizing committee

  • Simone Rebora (SIG-DLS)
  • Maciej Eder (CLS INFRA)
  • Joanna Byszuk (CLS INFRA and SIG-DLS)
  • Berenike Herrmann (SIG-DLS)
  • Suzanne Mpouli (SIG-DLS)
  • Pablo Ruiz Fabo (SIG-DLS)
  • Bartek Kunda (CLS INFRA)

Program

  • 9:00-10:30 Intro & Keynote speech I
  • 10:30-10:45 Break
  • 10:45-11:30 Lightning talks – session I
  • 11:30-11:45 Break
  • 11:45-12:30 Demo session
  • 12:30-13:30 Lunch
  • 13:30-15:00 Keynote speech II
  • 15:00-15:15 Break
  • 15:15-16:00 Lightning talks – session II
  • 16:00-16:30 Open mic

introduction

First, what CLS is about

  • Computational Literary Studies
  • Aimed at analyzing (large amounts of) textual data…
  • … by computational techniques

Foundations of CLS

  • Computation into criticism
  • Distant reading
  • Stylometry
  • Authorship attribution
  • Digital humanities
  • Language resources
  • Digital libraries
  • Natural language processing
  • Machine learning
  • Big data
  • …

1,000 Polish novels

SIG-DLS

The Digital Literary Stylistics Special Interest Group (SIG-DLS)…

… brings together researchers from different perspectives to discuss theoretical, methodological and technical issues of doing digital style analysis, share resources, and organize events and initiatives.

Special Interest Group

  • history
    • devised during a workshop at DH2016
    • founded in 2017
    • part of ADHO (with nine other SIGs)
    • 175 members (2 Aug 2024)
  • activities
    • mailing list
    • website (dls.hypotheses.org)
    • pre-conference events (…here comes the fifth!)
    • endorsements and liaisons

CLS INFRA

Computational Literary Studies Infrastructure (CLS INFRA) is a four-year partnership to build a shared resource of high-quality data, tools and knowledge to aid new approaches to studying literature in the digital age.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004984.

CLS INFRA project

  • text collections (corpora)
    • quality
    • metadata
    • conversion
  • methodology
    • tools (NLP, datavis, …)
    • methodological considerations
    • bibliographic survey
  • network of scholars
    • training schools
    • short-term research stays

ELTeC corpus

DraCor programmable corpora

survey of methods

training schools

  • Prague 2022
    • NLP tools
    • 25 participants on site
    • many more remotely
  • Madrid 2023
    • text analysis
  • Vienna 2024
    • corpus queries

TNA

  • transnational access
  • short-term research stays…
  • in one of 6 institutions:
    • NUI Galway
    • Uni Potsdam
    • Uni Trier
    • UNED Madrid
    • OEAW Vienna
    • Charles Uni, Prague
  • everyone eligible
  • two calls every year

The community is growing

  • SIG-DLS
  • Computational Stylistics Group
  • Federation of Stylometry Labs
  • COST Action “Distant Reading”
  • CLS INFRA
  • Journal of Computational Literary Studies
  • Cultural Analytics
  • …