Week 6: What new questions can we ask and answer with digital tools?

We didn’t have nearly as much time for our workshop yesterday as I would have liked, but I think it helped us get a feel for some tools commonly used to conduct text analysis and what they’re capable of doing. I hope you’ll continue to experiment with the programs listed on our resources page and perhaps even pursue one of them for our next assignment.

Here’s a brief summary of where we’re headed next week:

• Before you come to class on Monday, you should review several options for our second assignment and add your preferences to the spreadsheet I created in our shared Google Drive folder. During class, we will finalize everyone’s chosen tool, then conclude our discussion of Macroanalysis, with Lindsey and Andrew K. serving as our discussion superheroes. Please read Chapters 8-10 (pp. 118-75), as well as two short pieces online: “Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere,” by Kieran Healy, and “Should We Teach Literature Students How To Analyze Texts Algorithmically?”, by Luke Dormehl.
• We’ll devote our entire class session on Wednesday to an HTML and CSS workshop. Please bring your laptop to class and install one of the following text editors before you arrive: TextWrangler (Mac), Komodo Edit (Mac, Windows, or Linux), or Notepad++ (Windows). You don’t need to do anything else to prepare for the workshop, so your homework for Wednesday is to begin immersing yourself in your chosen tool for our second big assignment. [Update: When you get to class, please download the HTML workshop files.]

If you have questions about these plans, please let me know. Otherwise, I’ll see you in class on Monday!