Books as knowledge reservoirs – From critical distant reading to networks of ideas

At the core of this seminar lies the idea of books as a means of storing knowledge. While we traditionally tap into these reservoirs by getting lost in a good book, the raise of digital methods in humanities gives us new opportunities to have a more quantitative access to textual data. As with any new method and technology, this brings novel types of obstacles, inequalities, and valid criticism. The seminar aims at empowering students to understand both the possibilities as well as pitfalls of distant reading methods, both statistical and in the field of machine-learning by providing perspectives from the data science and critical theory. Within collaborative hands-on projects, students will work with every aspect of the distant reading pipeline and use text corpora of their own interest, pursuing their own research questions.

The seminar requires no prior experience in coding or other technical skills. Basic usage of a computer and a personal laptop are required. The interdisciplinary seminar is aimed at students from humanities, who are interested in practical knowledge of digital methods, and students from technical domains, who are interested in critically assessing their digital skills.