Digital Humanities

Digital Humanities & CLiC Project 

Hello,

This blog is based on Lab Activity: DH: MIT Moral Machine and CLiC Project , which is assigned by Dilip Barad Sir. In this blog I am going to discuss about various points like, What is Digital Humanities? , Why Department of English have this ? and what does DH do ? as well as going to discuss two activities based on CLiC project. Before going towards activities let us have a look on the definition of DH and how it's useful in Department of English and what does it do ?

What is Digital-Humanities ?

Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the analysis of their application.

Also, DH can be defined as new ways of doing scholarship that involve collaborative, trans-disciplinary, and computationally engaged research, teaching, and publishing and it brings digital tools and methods to the study of the humanities with the recognition that the printed word is no longer the main medium for knowledge production and distribution.

 Why it's found in English departments ? 

- Text has historically been easy for computers to manipulate, enabling research in areas like stylistics, linguistics, and author attribution.

-Long association between computers and composition studies.

- Convergence with digital archiving and electronic editions of texts.

- Interest in hypertext and electronic literature.

- Openness to cultural studies examining digital material culture.

- Recent explosion of e-reading devices and large-scale text digitization projects.

What do Digital Humanities Do ? 

1. Digital Archives :

     let us have an introduction to few archives....

• Indian Memory Project : https://www.indianmemoryproject.com/
• Gandhi Sevagram Ashram : https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/
• Harvard University - Arts and Humanities Research Computing: https://digitalhumanities.fas.harvard.edu/projects/
• Google Arts & Culture : https://artsandculture.google.com/
• The Victorian Web : https://victorianweb.org/

    These are some digital archives through with one can get more authentic information about their subject of interest, DH helps in such manners. DH also includes ,

2. Computational Humanities : 

   

    In the case of literature by using digital technology in research concern way one can analyse Literary text. One can also use digital technology in Teaching & Learning with the Pedagogical concern. and also DH can be use in Generative Literature. Lastly the most important part of the digital humanity is....

3. Multi-modal Critique : 

    

    The Fundamentals Of Humanities > Critical Inquiry 

With the connection of this Digital Humanities , The University of Birmingham launch one project for teachers and they have to experiment with the student . The name of the project is 'CLiC Project', and they have given one activity book "CLiC – Corpus Linguistics in Context, An Activity Book , Supporting the teaching of literature , at GCSE and AS/A-level, Version 1, November 2017". This book has been written for teachers and the exploration of literature in the classroom. Language and literature can be taught as separate subjects, but recent developments of language and literature specifications illustrate how both can and need to be integrated. For example, Marcello Giovanelli and colleagues have created resources supporting the teaching of the AQA English Language and Literature Specification.The CLiC – Activity Book is structured into two main parts – a methodological section that introduces the functionality of the CLiC app and a thematic section that illustrates specific thematic activities. 

In this The CLiC web app one can access four corpora and they are, 

1. DNov - Dickens's Novels
2. 19C - 19th Century Reference Corpus
3. ChiLit - 19th Century Children's Literature Corpus
4. ArTs - Additional Requested Texts

Number of texts and number of words in CLiC corpora

Corpus         Number of texts          Number of words

--------------------------------------------------------------

 DNov                      15                           3,835,807

 19C                         29                           4,513,070

 ChiLit                     71                           4,443,542

 ArTs                       23                           2,259,103

--------------------------------------------------------------

 Total                     138                         15,051,522

As I previously mentioned that The CLiC Project Book divided into two part , and the second part is activity based session , let's delve into that second part, Part II – Thematic Activities:

In this part of the CLiC Activity Book begin with questions. While the first part was on the technicalities of how to use CLiC, and then it focuses on how CLiC can help to address specific questions of the sort that might occur ‘naturally’ in a literature classroom. For example, one can notice a feature, theme, issue or pattern in reading of a novel, but the sense of it might be rather vague and one would like to explore it further: CLiC can help to do this. It can also help to refine individual's thinking, find evidence to support one's intuitions, and reveal further patterns in the text that the person might not have noticed. 

Activity : 1 Exploring theme in The Sign of the Four 

This activity will delve into the complex themes of justice and women's roles as portrayed in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four. We will examine the text, uncovering patterns, language, and characterizations related to these critical subjects. Through this analysis, we aim to gain deeper insights into Victorian society's perspectives on justice and the limitations and opportunities afforded to women during that era.

Activity 2 : The creation of fictional characters

Characters in literary fiction resemble real people, except they aren't real and we can sometimes see into their minds. We imagine fictional characters as having consciousness, beliefs, experiences, sensations, emotions, and feelings, much like real people. They interact with their physical environment and other characters in their fictional world in the same way we do in reality. Readers use similar cognitive processes to bring these characters to life, which explains why we can have strong emotional and ethical reactions to them. Texts provide cues and patterns for this rich readerly imagination, and tools like CLiC help identify these textual features to better understand characterization. 

For example, in Dickens's David Copperfield, the character Mr. Dick, though seemingly minor, plays a significant role. The novel is often considered autobiographical, paralleling Dickens's own life. Both David Copperfield and Charles Dickens share similar career paths. Mr. Dick, whose full name is Mr. Richard Babley, reflects Dickens himself. He writes an autobiographical 'Memorial' while being distracted by the image of Charles I’s head, symbolizing the authorial Charles.    

Mr. Dick describes himself as 'simple,' and Dickens's portrayal of him is an early sympathetic representation of mental illness. Using a simple CLiC search for Mr. Dick reveals every scene he appears in, showing that he is never mentioned unless he is present. This led us to examine his characterization, driven by a sense that the narration often focuses on his head and face, with many sentences like “Mr. Dick put his head into the parlor.”

8.1

8.2

By running a concordance search for "Dick" in the novel, we found hundreds of examples, mostly in the form "Mr. Dick." We then analyzed the specific patterns and contexts of these examples using CLiC at each stage. This procedure can be traced step by step.

8.3

You might also notice from the concordance list that there are intriguing narratorial descriptions around the reporting clause (e.g., "said Mr. Dick"), where the narrator interrupts the character's speech with a comment. These interruptions, known as 'suspensions' (as explained earlier in Part I, Section 3), can be easily identified using CLiC, as shown here.

8.4

8.5

Overall, one  can use CLiC in this way to support, enrich and develop their interpretation of particular textual patterns in the novel.         

Learning Outcome :

This was my first time tackling such a task. Analyzing all of a writer's books in just one or two hours to identify symbols and patterns is incredibly challenging. However, this project turns that research into a matter of seconds, making literature and language studies much easier. While dealing with the books themselves is complex, this approach simplifies the process.The tool's various filters let researchers categorize or exclude information. Direct links and hypertext guide users to specific chapters, providing evidence without reading entire books to understand symbols, characters, and behaviors.

It also offers a broad perspective, allowing analysis of up to fifteen texts at once instead of just a few. Fourthly, it is accessible to everyone and doesn't require a high-speed internet connection, simplifying research.Finally, it enhances understanding of a writer's style, tone, characterization, and themes. It also allows comparisons between multiple writers and their use of symbols and characters, even within the same century.    

Thank you so much for reading .

have a great time .