Bulletin der deutschen Slavistik 24.2018

Jahrbuch der Deutschen Slavistik mit Forumsbeiträgen zu Digital Humanities, Rubriken zu Personen, Publikationen, Preisen, Wirkungsorten, wissenschaftlichen Abhandlungen

A Kultura újraolvasása nagyobb távolságból - Egy irodalmi folyóirat mint a lengyel diaszpóra integrálója = Reading Kultura From a Distance: How a Literary Journal Integrated the Polish Diaspora

The Polish émigré journal Kultura was indisputably one of the key sites of Polish-language cultural production during the Cold War, yet it has been written about primarily as a virtual salon of its most famous contributors. This article offers a re-reading of Kultura on a global scale, using the tools of georeferencing and geoanalysis to demonstrate its widest spheres of dissemination among the diaspora. This approach, sometimes labeled “distant reading” is an attempt to illuminate new aspects of literary form and culture than can only be seen through a macro lens, including large-scale changes over space and time. This study of Kultura reveals new points of connection which were hidden by assumptions we have carried with us when reading it as a ‘dissident’ journal or a purely ‘émigré’ phenomenon. By illustrating a global framework for the journal’s reception, this chapter can begin to bridge the cartographic chasm caused by isolationist readings of Cold War texts

Visualizing "Big Data" in the Arts and Humanities

Visualizing "Big Data" in the Arts and Humanities recorded in four parts. [Part One:] Reading Big Data as a Humanist: The Humanities Visualization Studio (David J. Staley). This presentation explored the concept of a Humanities Visualization Studio for The Ohio State University and its potential role in leveraging "Big Data" to bring new insights and knowledge building in the humanities. Staley offered analysis of the unique approaches humanists might bring to working with large data sets and developing patterns of interpretive insight. He presented the concept of distant reading or macro-level reading as a methodology that is growing in relevance, initiating radical transformation of texts and enabled by emergent technologies. Staley further suggested the important role a Humanities Visualization Studio would have in bringing people together to collaborate, pool resources and move forward in concert. [Part Two:] Stanford’s Digital Humanities Labs (Jessie Labov). Labov shared her experience with Stanford’s Humanities Lab (http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/admin/directory.html), Beyond Search (https://beyondsearch.stanford.edu/) and Stanford Literary Lab (http://litlab.stanford.edu/) as examples of how digital humanities labs can address issues involved in working with humanities big data. These initiatives are explored as examples of how such efforts to bring a humanities community together can work (or not). Labov suggested three lessons to be learned from Stanford’s experience: there is a risk in developing digital humanities spaces and equipment stores which are not solidly based in viable research projects, that more successful efforts are built around researchers and their existing work and interests and that an institution needs to let these environments evolve as communities and community centers. [Part Three:] Thinking Metaphorically about Data (H. Lewis Ulman). Ulman offered examples of different humanities visualization projects as way of examining the concept of "big data" and how we might set an agenda for a visualization studio. Interrogating the concepts of "close," "distant," "wide," and "deep" reading, he suggests that it is not the size of the data set but the broadness of the opportunities for investigation that should determine the kind of projects to be addressed by the humanities visualization studio. Ulman demonstrated how applying visualization techniques that provide a "wide" view of the data found in the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives can offer new insights and conclusions. Similarly, investigating single words in Louisa A. Doane's Journal of Two Ocean Voyages (1850-52) against the "wide" canvas of the Google Books database increased students understanding of historical context and meaning. He suggested that archival finding aids can be made more understandable and facilitate research more effectively by employing visualization tools. Finally, by exploring the process of transforming "deep" text-encoding markup into reading or "surface" versions of texts, Ulman showed how electronic textual editions in themselves are visualizations of complex or "big" data. In these ways, data sets that seem small in size can have larger meaning through data visualization. [Part Four:] Visualization Q&A session. A portion of the Q&A session following the presentations of the panel for Visualizing "Big Data" in the Arts and Humanities records audience insights into the meaning behind the term "big data" and how we might develop initiatives at The Ohio State University.Panelists David Staley (Associate Professor, The Ohio State University Department of History), Jessie Labov (Assistant Professor, The Ohio State University Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures), and H. Lewis Ulman (Associate Professor, The Ohio State University Department of English) explored the place of data visualization as a form of humanities scholarship, with visualization as the hermeneutic act that allows humanists to read "big data." The panel described the concept of a Humanities Visualization Studio at The Ohio State University to conduct such humanistic readings of big data. Questions centered around defining "big data" in the context of the humanities, how humanists read big data, how our interests and goals with reading big data differ from that of scientists, and how visualization and visual hermeneutics is critical to the effort to read that data. As we read our texts, humanists seek not better models or predictive certainty, but rather patterns of interpretive insight. Reading big data is an occasion for humanists to assert our approach to knowledge: to champion the value of meaning, interpretation and insight in contrast to the logic of scientific prediction and control.Reading Big Data as a Humanist: The Humanities Visualization Studio (David J. Staley) -- Stanford’s Digital Humanities Labs (Jessie Labov) -- Thinking Metaphorically about Data (H. Lewis Ulman) -- Visualization Q&A session

A case study protocol for meta-research into digital practices in the humanities

This paper presents a multicase study protocol for meta-research in Digital Humanities, prepared by Digital Methods and Practices Observatory (DiMPO) Working Group of the Digital Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities in Europe (DARIAH). The protocol is intended to help researchers in conducting meta-research and adopting this methodology for different purposes, disciplines and approaches. As many of the issues raised here are already covered in manuals for social research, our focus is the specificity of meta-research in the DH environment. The specificity of DH in this respect relies on an intrinsic challenge of bringing together generally undertheorised approaches of the humanities with very formal and process-driven ICT approaches. The main assumption behind this research is that a meaningful change in scholarly practices is taking place and is worth investigating. Moreover, a full assessment of this transformation should not focus exclusively on pioneering research, but rather on the selective uptake of digital practices and methods by researchers in the humanities: those who do not necessarily affiliate themselves with DH but simply use digital tools to explore particular problems. Hence, this paper should be of interest not only to researchers willing to conduct meta analysis, but to all DH practitioners willing to gain critical perspective on their work, as well as for those working on funding, evaluation and research policy. Three pilot studies are discussed in this paper, as they served as a basis for the protocol. They focused on different "units of inquiry" (individual researchers, projects, research communities) and varied in methodological directions: (a) individual interviews with Polish DH researchers; (b) mixed-methods analysis of digital practice in E-CURATORS, a multicase SSHRC Insight project focusing on archaeological research sites or projects, integrating individual interviews, document analysis and naturalistic observation; and, (c) group interviews with historians and literary scholars conducted within the framework of NEP4DISSENT COST Action. The resulting protocol is discussed in detail and some directions for further research are suggested

Mediating Research Through Technology @ NEP4DISSENT

Abstract and poster of paper 0217 presented at the Digital Humanities Conference 2019 (DH2019), Utrecht , the Netherlands 9-12 July, 2019

New Exploratory Phase in Research on East European Cultures of Dissent: Joint Review Report: Report prepared by the participants of the COST Action CA16213

The present document, the Joint Review Report (JRR), concludes the first stage of COST Action 16213, New Exploratory Phase in Research on East European Cultures of Dissent (NEP4DISSENT), which is aimed at leveraging the power of an international, multidisciplinary, and technology-conscious research network to survey the state of the art and chart new directions in scholarship. The JRR builds on and deepens the shared framework for the understanding of the methodological and conceptual challenges to the state of the art in this domain of research (described in Section 1), which has brought together a large and diverse group of scholars, curators, and digital humanities practitioners (see further in Section 2). This group grew into a robust and integrated research network through the process of the State of the Art Review (SotAR), whose outcome the JRR now presents to a wider audience. The SotAR process (described in Section 3) was designed to pool together research agendas and to identify specific focus areas into which this Action will intervene in order to trigger a new exploratory phase in research on Eastern European cultures of dissent. The chapters of this report, each prepared by a different NEP4DISSENT Working Group (WG), represent the outcomes of the SotAR process