IMC 2019: Sessions

These two workshops are addressed to an audience of medievalists with little or no exposure to digital methods in the humanities, as well as to medievalists interested in learning about and participating in an international digital humanities project. Each workshop will have a theoretical segment, in which the workshop leaders will present the subject and discuss with participants, followed by 'hands on' exercises in which participants will apply the skills acquired. The first workshop is more oriented toward the theoretical (building a digital resource), while the second is more practice-oriented (using a digital resource). The two workshops are interrelated, but also autonomous, which means that participants could benefit from attending either, or both, of the sessions.

Session II: Text Analysis
This workshop will use medieval vernacular texts, in order to illustrate the benefits and limitations of computer-assisted analysis. The main goal is for the participants to understand the importance of curated digital corpora, as they explore how computer-assisted analysis of text can encourage researchers to generate new research questions. After a brief introduction to three distinct analytical methods (30 minutes), participants will be guided through a hands on exercise using the method of their choice in smaller groups, so that they obtain a basic knowledge of what it affords scholarly research on texts (60 minutes). The three methods to be presented are:
● Voyant Tools: Basic Text analysis with the low-barrier, web-based reading environment.
● Stylometry with R: Classification of texts using stylistic similarities and creation of a basic dendogram using the R package 'stylo'.
● Recogito: Semantic annotation of geographical information, places, and events.