During the roundtable “Distant Reading, Digital Humanities, and Italian Studies” at the 2015 Conference of the American Association of Italian Studies, Selena Daly (Dept. of French and Italian, University of California, Santa Barbara) will present a joint work carried out with Giovanni Moretti and Rachele Sprugnoli: “A Distant Reading of F.T. Marinettis Writings (1909-1918)”.
The conference will be held at the University of Colorado Boulder.
The roundtable is scheduled for Friday March 27, 10:30-11:45.
ABSTRACT
A Distant Reading of F.T. Marinettis Writings (1909-1918)
This intervention will reflect on the findings of a pilot project using Natural Language Processing tools to analyse F.T. Marinetti’s early Futurist writings, focusing on how his language use changed over time and according to the document type (speech, manifesto, article). The ALCIDE platform (Analysis of Language and Content in a Digital Environment) facilitates the searching and analysis of information in texts from the temporal perspective, focusing on identification of key concepts and linguistic change over time. The platform permits a smooth transition between distant and close readings of texts, in an effort to overcome one of the major criticisms of distant reading approaches.
We will use this case study to consider broader DH issues, such as the tension between close and distant readings of texts, and the potential benefits of these kinds of tools on our teaching of Italian literature and history, allowing students to independently navigate a corpus of documents, leading to new historical and cultural insights.
Location:
University of Colorado Boulder
Contacts:
sprugnoli[AT]fbk.eu
Programme
Distant Reading, Digital Humanities, and Italian Studies (roundtable)
Organizer: Lorenzo Fabbri (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)
- Carol Chiodo (Yale University): Distant Reading a Discipline. Dante in North America
- Selena Daly (University of California, Santa Barbara): A Distant Reading of F.T. Marinettis Writings (1909-1918)
- Crystal Hall (Bowdoin College): Distant Reading Italian Film and Literature at a Liberal Arts College
- Guy Raffa (University of Texas at Austin): Barking Up a Different Tree: A Digital Humanities Complement to Distant Reading.
