Developing Quantitative Methodologies for the Digital Humanities: A Case Study of 20th Century American Commentary on Russian Literature

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorMallios, Peter Lancelot
dc.contributor.authorCai, Robert
dc.contributor.authorCarr, Matthew Thomas
dc.contributor.authorElrafei, Adam
dc.contributor.authorGoniprow, Alexander
dc.contributor.authorHamins-Puertolas, Adrian
dc.contributor.authorKhural, Manpreet
dc.contributor.authorLi, Andrew
dc.contributor.authorWinter, Alexandra
dc.contributor.authorYanamandra, Soumya
dc.contributor.authorYang, Dan
dc.contributor.authorZhang, Kay
dc.date.accessioned2014-07-16T13:40:14Z
dc.date.available2014-07-16T13:40:14Z
dc.date.issued2014
dc.description.abstractUsing scientific methods in the humanities is at the forefront of objective literary analysis. However, processing big data is particularly complex when the subject matter is qualitative rather than numerical. Large volumes of text require specialized tools to produce quantifiable data from ideas and sentiments. Our team researched the extent to which tools such as Weka and MALLET can test hypotheses about qualitative information. We examined the claim that literary commentary exists within political environments and used US periodical articles concerning Russian literature in the early twentieth century as a case study. These tools generated useful quantitative data that allowed us to run stepwise binary logistic regressions. These statistical tests allowed for time series experiments using sea change and emergency models of history, as well as classification experiments with regard to author characteristics, social issues, and sentiment expressed. Both types of experiments supported our claim with varying degrees, but more importantly served as a definitive demonstration that digitally enhanced quantitative forms of analysis can apply to qualitative data. Our findings set the foundation for further experiments in the emerging field of digital humanities.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/15536
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.relation.isAvailableAtDigital Repository at the University of Maryland
dc.relation.isAvailableAtGemstone Program, University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
dc.subjectBig dataen_US
dc.subjectQualitative researchen_US
dc.subjectLiteratureen_US
dc.subjectGemstone Team POLITICen_US
dc.titleDeveloping Quantitative Methodologies for the Digital Humanities: A Case Study of 20th Century American Commentary on Russian Literatureen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
POLITIC Thesis 7-5-2014.pdf
Size:
6.59 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
1.57 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description:
Download
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
POLITIC_License.pdf
Size:
283.92 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Download

Collections

Gemstone Team Research