DH Summer Scholars present their work
Digi’s Digital Humanities Summer Scholars, Katie Curry, Maggie Dryden, Bradley Camacho, Annelle Brunson, Trevor Talmadge, and Jordan Miceli, presented their summer’s work demonstrating the application of digital humanities to projects of their own design.
A Portrait of Bondage
Katie Curry, a senior majoring in English, did a textual “analysis of narrative styles exhibited in the two coming of age novels”[1] Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham and James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, investigating why the novels had vastly different receptions despite their similar themes ,. Curry studied the vocabulary density, word 
choice, and sentence structure of both works. She specifically focused on word usage surrounding certain words that appeared frequently in both novels; visually displayed using the text analysis program Voyant Tools. Curry proposed her future goals with hope to see how the novels affect current culture.
The Landscape Poetry of T.S. Eliot and Hart Crane
Maggie Dryden is a senior majoring in English and minoring in History with a certificate in Digital Humanities. For her project, Dryden was “interested to see what kinds of effects of a geographical location has on artistic generation, specifically in the realm of poetry”[2]). Like Curry she also used the text analysis tool Voyant. Dryden used these tools two very different poets to compare T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and Hart Crane’s “The Bridge” to investigate similarities in their word choices to communicate the contrasting themes of hope and desperation.
Exploring Borges in Translation
Rising junior, Bradley Camacho, majors in English and minors in Computer Science. Camacho’s project explores began with the question, is ther
e “enough evidence to call Postmodernism simply a sub-genre of Modernism”[3] . As his question evolved he investigated whether the English translations of Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “The Library of Babel” impacted the way English readers viewed the text and where it was placed in the literary canon. He looked at three different translations of “The Library of Babel” by Hurley, Kerrigan, and Irby to study how different each translation compared to each other. Camacho looked specifically interested in the word usage among the three translations to observe the similarities and differences of each. By using sentiment analysis in R, a programming language, he was able to map out the positive and negative words within each translation to compare the overall trends while also observing specific emotions across each translation. http://litdiff.com/
Midnight Knell: Stillbirth and Infant Mortality in Athens 1919 -1928
Annelle Brunson is a master’s student in History with her B.B.A. in Accounting. Brunson pulled from her experience of using data visualizations to 
show how stillbirth and infant mortality manifested in a microcosmic southern town during the early twentieth century. She dives deep into 1920s Athens using data from the digitized Clarke County death certificates to discuss women’s access to public health care and highlight the differences in race, sex and age. Brunson shows how reducing infant mortality and stillbirth was a twofold problem: first women needed better access to healthcare, and second, healthcare had to be extended to all women. Her visualizations also confirm that Athens stillbirth gender ratio mimicked the male dominant national average. Going forward, she would like to incorporate all available data (1919-1942) and expand the geographical scope of her project. Midnight Knell
Suicide and Mental Health
Trevor Talmadge, a senior majoring in Women’s Studies and Linguistics, is interested in the realm of mental health. The goal of Talmadge’s project is “to illuminate how societal norms that span but are not limited to gender, race, class, sexuality, and ability much exacerbate mental health issues across these boundaries but in different ways”[4]. Talmadge did a textual analysis on the top media’s coverage on Robin Williams’ suicide to dive into how identity has affected suicide and conversations about suicides. He wants to take media coverage and twitter posts to observe how both the media and the public responded immediately following his suicide. He also wants to investigate current-response trends after time has passed since his death. The goal of Talmadge’s project aims to begin a new era of mental health where there is more open discussion.
Women’s Political Participation in CEDAW states
Jordan Miceli is a senior majoring in International Affairs and double-minoring in Women’s Studies and History. Following school, Miceli “intend[s] to continue on to law school where [she] hopes to study Human Rights law as it pertains to the United States and the world, specifically concerning women and children”[5]. Miceli’s project investigates the political participation of women in each of the seven Convention on the Elimination Against Women (CEDAW) treaty party states to see if an increase or improvement has been observed since ratification. Miceli’s project specifically focuses on article seven of the CEDAW treaty. jordanmiceli97.wixsite.com
These six scholars were incredibly successful this summer in applying the tools and methodologies of Digital Humanities to real-world investigations. Each of their projects was impressive and will launch their research for their future.
Do you want to be a part of something bigger? Have you ever had a passion that you wanted to dive deeper into? Join Digital Humanities next summer in your investigation! Keep an eye out for next summer’s application and join your fellow Summer Scholars in the search!
[1] https://dhsummerscholars.wordpress.com/curry/
[2] https://dhsummerscholars.wordpress.com/dryden/
[3] https://dhsummerscholars.wordpress.com/camacho/)
[4] https://dhsummerscholars.wordpress.com/talmadge/
[5] https://dhsummerscholars.wordpress.com/miceli/