Close Reading with Computers: Genre Signals, Parts of Speech, and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004) contains six different generic registers. This article is the first to explore computationally the linguistic mechanisms that create these genre effects. Authorship attribution techniques incorrectly cluster the chapters of Cloud Atlas as distinct ‘authors’ using anything above the nineteen most-common words. This has implications for understandings of literary style and authorship. The seafaring parts of Mitchell’s novel, however, do not correlate with the writings of Herman Melville using Burrows’s delta method. Part-of-speech trigram visualization and analysis reveals the unique present-tense linguistic phrasings (NNP NNP VBZ and NNP VBZ DT) that lend pace to the Luisa Rey section of the novel

Motions 2010 volume 46 number 5

https://digital.sandiego.edu/motions/1149/thumbnail.jp

Montana Kaimin, April 20, 1994

Student newspaper of the University of Montana, Missoula.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/studentnewspaper/9755/thumbnail.jp

Campus Crier

Student newspaper for Central Washington University for May 13, 1960https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/cwu_student_newspaper/1945/thumbnail.jp

Montana Kaimin, April 13, 1994

Student newspaper of the University of Montana, Missoula.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/studentnewspaper/9751/thumbnail.jp

HISTORY FROM THE MIDDLE: THE STUDENT INTERPRETERS CORPS AND IMAGINED AMERICAN ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM IN CHINA, 1902-1941

The project of American economic imperialism in China during the first half of the twentieth century was first and foremost an imagined enterprise. This dissertation examines the role of the Student Interpreters Corps (SIC) in this endeavor. Studying language-trained intermediaries, this treatment is a first step towards studying history with an approach that is neither top-down nor bottom-up but rather middle-outward. Examining hitherto neglected personnel records and State Department correspondence, this study reveals the SIC as part of an imagined but unsuccessful program of economic imperialism. Although effective in garnering American business interest and support for Foreign Service reform and expansion, efforts to entice American merchants and companies to enter Asian markets (particularly in China) failed to yield a coherent, successful trade empire. However, the largely unstated goal of increased American power was achieved as the result of a bureaucratic imperative for specialization, professionalization, and institutional expansion set in motion during the establishment of the SIC. Examining the evolving roles and views of SIC-trained intermediaries, this dissertation finds that while the imagined trade empire failed to materialize, the SIC contributed to a developing American perception of China that envisioned increasingly greater American intervention in East Asia. In this millieu, a “Peking” order emerged by the mid-1920s that became influential in American East Asia policy towards the eve of Word War II that saw China as vital to American interests. Established as precursor of American economic empire in China, the SIC was instrumental in shifting discourse away from economic empire towards an interventionist American Orientalism. Trade expansion rhetoric waned and Orientalist language solidified as Japanese aggression became more blatant and the ascendance of Communism in China ever more certain. Highlighting the bureaucratic intermediaries as new method of studying history, this study indicates that the project of American economic imperialism was largely imagined, but one that transformed to accommodate evolving visions of expanding American power in East Asia. These conclusions offer new challenges to and opportunities for scholars of American foreign relations

The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies

This book delivers an introduction and overview of developing intersections between digital methods and literary studies. The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies serves as a starting place for those who wish to learn more about the possibilities, and the limitations, of the oft-touted digital humanities in the literary space. The volume engages with the proponents of digital humanities and its detractors alike, aiming to offer a fair and balanced perspective on this controversial topic. The book combines a survey and background approach with original literary research and, therefore, straddles the divide between seasoned digital experts and interested newcomers

Montana Kaimin, April 27, 1994

Student newspaper of the University of Montana, Missoula.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/studentnewspaper/9759/thumbnail.jp

The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies

This book delivers an introduction and overview of developing intersections between digital methods and literary studies. The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies serves as a starting place for those who wish to learn more about the possibilities, and the limitations, of the oft-touted digital humanities in the literary space. The volume engages with the proponents of digital humanities and its detractors alike, aiming to offer a fair and balanced perspective on this controversial topic. The book combines a survey and background approach with original literary research and, therefore, straddles the divide between seasoned digital experts and interested newcomers