Spyral Notebooks as a Supplement to Voyant Tools

This paper introduces Spyral Notebooks, a notebook environment that extends Voyant Tools and offers a space for both notating and presenting analysis and for developing JavaScript code that extends Voyant. In the paper we present the design justifications for Spyral, showcase some of the analytical possibilities of Spyral, and address recent criticism of notebook environments. We suggest Spyral Notebooks help teach students to think-through digital text analysis and argue that the design of Spyral makes it rich in potential for the humanities researcher. We also highlight the collaborative possibilities of Spyral and show ways in which Spyral Notebooks have been used for collaborative digital humanities projects. Finally, we discuss future plans for Spyral. Dans cet article nous présentons le Spyral Notebooks, un notebook ou calepin électronique qui étend le Voyant Tools et offre un cadre pour le commentaire et la présentation de l'analyse et pour le développement de code JavaScript. Nous justifions la conception pour Spyral, soulignons des possibilités analytiques de Spyral et discutons des critiques de calepins électroniques. Nous suggérons que le Spyral Notebooks enseigne aux étudiants entendre l'analyse de texte numérique et nous disputons que la conception de Spyral rend prometteur pour les chercheurs humanistes. Nous soulignons aussi les possibilités de collaboration avec Spyral Notebooks. Finalement, nous discussions les directions futures pour Spyral

Replicating Fortier's THEME System for Digital Text Analysis

In 1971, Paul Fortier created a computer program to save significant time in analyzing French literary theme words connected to semantic fields. The system, aptly called THEME, harnessed the capabilities of computer-generated keyword concordances with frequency and distribution calculations to create research reports for user-defined literary themes. Fortier's system represents a significant achievement for digital humanities, not only due to its impressive capabilities but also for the precedents the system created in conceptualizing the role of the computer in text analysis. This paper discusses efforts to recover the THEME system and create a working approximation of the system in Python. This effort is part of Stéfan Sinclair and Geoffrey Rockwell's Epistemologica project that seeks to recover, valorize, and interpret historical text analysis in the humanities

Speculating with Voyant: Designs for Data Walls

In recent years, there has been an explosion of data. One approach to big data is visualization. Data can be transformed in aesthetic ways to reveal its truths and to make it appear accessible to humans. What often gets ignored in visualization is the context of consumption of visualizations. Increasingly visualizations are showing up on data walls in public spaces. The scale of data walls and the types of spaces where they are installed change the interpretation and rhetorical affordances of visualization, and that is what this paper is about: exploring the new visual space of data walls through speculative design prototypes

Soviet Motherhood in the Gulag, Lived and Remembered

My comps examines women\u27s accounts of the Soviet Gulag using archival and memoir sources. I focus on women\u27s conceptions of themselves as mothers, isolating pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing as key gendered motifs in women\u27s memoirs of the Gulag. I also examine Soviet family policy in the 1930s and women\u27s understandings of their roles as mothers vis-a-vis the Soviet state