Distant Reading Conversion in Early Modernity

Authors

  • Stephen Wittek Carnegie Mellon University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.31658

Keywords:

Cognition, digital humanities, early modern, conversion

Abstract

This essay provides an overview of the theory, methodology, and technical innovation driving the creation of Distant Reading Early Modernity (DREaM), a digital humanities platform that makes a massive corpus of early modern texts amenable for use with macro-scale analytical tools. Key focus areas include (i) introduction to DREaM and the Early Modern Conversions project, (ii) the argument for our approach to the early modern archive, (iii) overview of the digital tools available through DREaM-Voyant, (iv) the making of DREaM, and solutions to technical problems deriving from non-standardized spelling.

Author Biography

  • Stephen Wittek, Carnegie Mellon University

    Stephen Wittek is Assistant Professor of Renaissance Drama, at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. Previously he was a scholar of Renaissance drama and manager of the Early Modern Conversions project at McGill University. His latest book is entitled The Media Players: Shakespeare, Middleton, Jonson, and the Idea of News (University of Michigan Press).

References

Anderson, Robert, and Eugene B. Power. 1990. Edition of One: The Autobiography Of Eugene B. Power, Founder Of University Microfilms. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press.

Clark, Andy. 2010. “Material Surrogacy and the Supernatural: Reflections on the Role of Artifacts in ‘Off-line’ Cognition”. In The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the Boundaries of the Mind, ed. Lambros Malafouris and Colin Renfrew, 23–28. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Hadot, Pierre. 1968. “Conversion”. Translated by Andrew B. Irvine, https://aioz.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/pierre-hadot-conversion-translated-by-andrew-irvine/ (accessed September 21, 2015). Originally published in Encyclopaedia Universalis, vol. 4 (Paris: Universalis France), 979–81.

Jockers, Matthew. 2013. Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Marcocci, Giuseppe, Wietse de Boer, Aliocha Maldavsky and Ilaria Pavan, eds. 2015. Space and Conversion in Global Perspective. Leiden: Brill.

Moretti, Franco. 2013. Distant Reading. London: Verso.

– 2007. Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History. London: Verso.

Nasifoglu, Yelda. 2014. “Oxford English Dictionary Study”, https://tinyurl.com/2013-06-OED (accessed September 21, 2015). Summary of “Conversion”. Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, http://www.oed.com.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/view/Entry/40773?redirectedFrom=conversion#eid

Mills, Kenneth, and Anthony Grafton, eds. 2003. Conversion: Old Worlds and New. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.

Questier, Michael. 1996. Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reddy, William. 2001. The Navigation of Feeling a Framework for the History of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511512001

Rosaldo, Michelle Z. 1984. “Toward an Anthropology of Self and Feeling”. In Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion, ed. Richard Shweder and Robert Levine, 137–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sinclair, Stéfan, and Rockwell, Geoffrey. 2016. “Voyant Facts”. Hermeneuti.ca: Computer-Assisted Interpretation in the Humanities. http://hermeneuti.ca/VoyantFacts. Last accessed 2 July 2017.

Sutton, John, and Evelyn Tribble. 2011. “Cognitive Ecology as a Framework for Shakespearean Studies”. Shakespeare Studies 39: 94–103.

Downloads

Published

2018-03-29

Issue

Section

Digital Humanities, Cognitive Historiography and the Study of Religion

How to Cite

Wittek, S. (2018). Distant Reading Conversion in Early Modernity. Journal of Cognitive Historiography, 3(1-2), 119-133. https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.31658