Language Technologies and Digital Humanities

The term ‘distant reading’ was introduced more than two decades ago by Franco Moretti in the field of literary studies:

"‘Distant reading’, I have once called this type of approach; where distance is however not an obstacle, but a specific form of knowledge: fewer elements, hence a sharper sense of their overall interconnection. Shapes, relations, structures. Forms. Models" (Moretti 2005, p. 1).

Since then, Moretti’s distant reading approach has provided a fresh under­standing of literature and its historical development not by studying in detail a few particular texts (as in the so-called ‘close reading’), but rather by aggregating and analyzing large amounts of information, so as to solve (or at least to face) the so-called problem of the Great Unread.

The course aims at introducing the application of distant reading methods and techniques not only to the history of literature, but also and especially to the history of thought, and in particular to the history of philosophy, broadly conceived.

The course will make a case for a results-driven (rather than a methods-driven) approach by presenting some case-studies in which various methods and techniques (such as for example serial reading, analysis of metadata, authomatic search, topic modeling, and so forth) are applied to a variety of textual data with the aim of answering questions raised within the humanities (above all, literary studies and the history of philosophy). 

At the end of the course students should

- have a clear view of Franco Moretti's distant reading approach in the history of literature;

- have a clear understanding of several ways in which distant reading can be applied to the history of philosophy;

- be able to build a distant reading project, raising a research question and applying quantitative methods to a given textual corpus, in order to provide an answer.

The course is divided into two main parts: Lectures & Seminar

Lectures (9 classes): Distant reading in the work of Franco Moretti and in the history of philosophy

1. Syllabus presentation and Introduction: The problem of the Great Unread

Moretti's distant reading

2. Serial reading: Investigating the presence and role of clues in detective stories (Moretti 2000)

3. Analysis of metadata: 7,000 title of 18^th-century British novels (Moretti 2009)

4. Computer-assisted distant reading: interpreting patterns in textual corpora (Moretti 2017) + analysis of the language of World Bank reports (Moretti and Pestre 2015)

Distant reading in the history of philosophy

5. Analysis of metadata: Wittgenstein and academic success in America (Bonino and Tripodi 2020)

6. Serial reading: Logic in analytic philosophy (Bonino, Maffezioli and Tripodi 2021)

7. Computational History of Ideas: The use of the term 'conceptual scheme' in philosophy and psychology during time  (Betti and van den Berg 2019)

8. Distributional Concept Analysis: The idea of liberty 1600-1800 (De Bolla et al. 2020); Topic modeling: Philosophy of science 1934-2015 (Malaterre, Chartier and Pulizzotto 2019); Analysis of Philosophical Style: Stanley Cavell's use of parentheses (Babbiotti and Ciruzzi 2022)

Open problems and questions

9. Methodological focus: Moretti, Lukács, and 'reverse engineering'; the problem of operationalization (Bonino and Tripodi 2021), the problem of corpus building (Pasini 2021); results-driven versus methods-driven approaches; the quantitative turn in the humanities: an appraisal (Moretti 2022).

Seminar (9 classes): Project-building

1. Students are divided into small groups. Some textual corpora are described and made available. Brainstorming within each group.

2. Class presentation: Each group briefly presents to the class a research question to be investigated by applying distant reading and other quantitative methods to a textual corpus.

3. Each group selects the corpus and prepares it for analysis.

4. Each group individuates the methods and tools for its reseach project.

5. Class presentation: each group briefly presents to the class its corpus and methods.

6. Each group annotates the selected corpus.

7. Annotation again, and analysis.

8. Analysis: each group draws some results and analyses them.

9. Class presentation: each group briefly presents to the class its man results.

Lectures (nine classes) and seminar (nine classes).

At the end of the course students will be required to write a short essay, providing a description of the distant reading project they have built in class during the seminar.

Students who do not attend the course will take an oral exam, based on the study of a selection of texts, chosen and agreed upon with the teacher among those listed below in the Suggested readings and bibliography section.

Some texts and further material will be uploaded on the Moodle platform before the beginning of the course.

FOR STUDENTS WITH SLD OR DISABILITY

GENERAL INFORMATION
Students with SLD or disability are invited to click on the following links for general information. Support: https://www.unito.it/servizi/lo-studio/studenti-con-disabilita

Reception: https://www.unito.it/accoglienza-studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa),

Exams:https://www.unito.it/servizi/lo-studio/studenti-e-studentesse-con-disabilita/supporto-studenti-e-studentesse-con.

FURTHER INFOS
Students with SLD are invited to get in touch with the teacher at the beginning of the course, to agree upon a personal teaching program, if required. 

P. Babbiotti and M. Ciruzzi, Doing philosophy as opening parentheses: quantifying the use of parentheses in Stanley Cavell's style, "Inquiry", 2022

A. Betti and H. van den Berg, Modelling the History of Ideas, in «British Journal for the History of Philosophy», 22, 2014, n. 4, pp. 812-835

A. Betti and H. van den Berg, Towards a Computational History of Ideas, in DHLU 2013: Digital Humanities Luxembourg: Proceedings of the Third Conference on Digital Humanities in Luxembourg with a Special Focus on Reading Historical Sources in the Digital Age, ed. by L. Wieneke, C. Jones, M. Düring, F. Armaselu e R. Leboutte, 2016

A. Betti, H. van den Berg, Y. Oortwijn e C. Treijtel, History of Philosophy in Ones and Zeros, in Methodological Advances in Experimental Philosophy, ed. by M. Curtis e E. Fischer, London, Bloomsbury, 2019, pp. 295-332

G. Bonino and P. Tripodi, Academic Success in America: Analytic Philosophy and the Decline of Wittgenstein, in «British Journal for the History of Philosophy», 28, 2020, n. 2, pp. 359-392.

G. Bonino and P. Tripodi, Distant Reading and the Problem of Operationalization. Goldilockean Considerations, in CoSMo 18, 2021

G. Bonino, P. Maffezioli and P. Tripodi, Logic in Analytic Philosophy: A Quantitative Analysis, in «Synthese», 197, 2021

P. de Bolla, E. Jones, P. Nulty, G. Recchia e J. Regan, The Idea of Liberty 1600-1800: A Distributional Concept Analysis, in «Journal of the History of Ideas», 81, 2020, n. 3, pp. 381-406.

C. Malaterre, J.-F. Chartier e D. Pulizzotto, What Is This Thing Called Philosophy of Science? A Computational Topic-Modeling Perspective, 1934-2015, in «HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science», 9, 2019, n. 2, pp. 215-249.

F. Moretti, The Slaughterhouse of Literature, in «Modern Language Quarterly», 61, 1, 2000, pp. 207-227.

F. Moretti, Style, Inc.: Reflections on 7,000 Titles (British Novels, 1740-1850), in «Critical Inquiry», 36, 2009, n. 1, pp. 134-158.

F. Moretti, Distant Reading, London-New York, Verso, 2013

F. Moretti, Patterns and Interpretation, Stanford Literary Lab Pamphlet 15, 2017

F. Moretti, Falso movimento. La svolta quantitativa nella storia della letteratura, Nottetempo, 2022

F. Moretti, D. Pestre, Bankspeak: The Language of World Bank Reports, 1946-;2012, Pamphlet 9 of the Stanford Literary Lab, 2015

E. Pasini, On some challenges posed by corpus-based research in the history of ideas, DR2 Working Papers 1, 2021

The course is expected to start in the second half of the first semester, i.e., in November 2023. 

Students (especially those who intend to attend the course) are kindly requested to register on the Campusnet page and the Moodle platform, so as to make communication easier.