Week 5: Can we (should we?) quantify texts?

I hope you’re all safe and warm today, enjoying one of Virginia Tech’s rare snow days! The storm definitely threw off our schedule, but I think we’ll be able to get back on track during Week 5. Here’s what we’ll do to catch up:

• On Monday, we’ll listen to your presentations about the first assignment. If you’re planning to use PowerPoint, please remember to upload your file to your shared Google Drive folder before class. (On a side note, I saw that all of your essay files were in your shared folders, but a few of you still need to convert them to Google Docs format. Please take care of that ASAP.) If time allows, I’ll introduce our next assignment at the end of class.
• We’ll postpone Monday’s reading assignment, so please be ready to discuss Chapters 6 and 7 of Macroanalysis (pp. 63–117) in class on Wednesday. Ashley and Alexis will once again be our discussion superheroes. We’ll shorten our discussion in order to experiment with some text analysis tools. To prepare for the workshop, you should download a “plain text” version (not some other format, like HTML or ePub) of a novel you know well from Project Gutenberg before you come to class.

If you have questions about your presentation or anything else related to class, feel free to email me over the weekend.