Lab Session: Digital Humanities
Hello learners. I'm a student. I'm writing this blog as a part of lab session activity. This task is assign by Dilip sir Barad. Here are the further information provide. Click here.
My Experience during the session :
Voyant Tools :
Digital Humanities Lab Session: Exploring Literature with Machines
The Digital Humanities Lab session provided a fascinating glimpse into how technology reshapes the ways we read, interpret, and even question the creation of literature. This activity allowed me to move beyond traditional reading practices and engage with computational tools that not only analyze texts but also challenge long-held assumptions about creativity and authorship.
Can Machines Write Poems?
We began with a thought-provoking quiz inspired by the long-standing debate: Can machines write poems? The task was to distinguish between human-written and computer-generated poetry. Out of 10, I scored 8, which made me reflect on how difficult it has become to clearly separate the human voice from machine output. This blurring of boundaries suggests that poetic quality now lies less in authorship and more in interpretation. It was striking to realize that machines can imitate human creativity so persuasively, yet they still struggle with subtlety, emotional layering, and context.
This exercise tied back to Prof. Dilip Barad’s blog What if Machines Write Poems, which emphasizes how the “aura” of literature changes when machines participate in the act of writing.
Visualization with Voyant Tools
The lab further deepened our engagement with Voyant Tools, where I chose Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as the text for analysis. Voyant produced five different types of graphs, including frequency clouds, distribution trends, and distinctive word patterns.
Through these visualizations, I could see how recurring words such as life, monster, creation, and fear shaped the novel’s thematic intensity. The graphs highlighted how Shelley intertwined themes of ambition and responsibility with repeated linguistic cues. This computational reading made the novel’s anxieties about science and humanity visible in ways I had not noticed during conventional reading.
CLiC Tools :
Studying Dickens and Austen through CLiC
The next activity introduced us to the CLiC (Corpus Linguistics in Context) Project, where we explored the writings of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen using the CLiC Activity Book. Unlike close reading, CLiC allowed me to observe patterns across large chunks of text repeated phrases, character references, and collocations that a casual reader might easily miss.
Working step by step through the activity guide, our group discovered how Dickens, for instance, frequently used distinctive word clusters to sketch vivid social environments, while Austen’s stylistic patterns reflected her ironic tone and sharp observations of manners. In group discussions, we realized how CLiC provides a new kind of “distant reading” that complements our traditional close readings.
Reflections and Learning Outcomes
This lab session transformed my perspective on reading and interpretation in the digital age. The key insights I gained are:
1. Blurring Human and Machine Creativity – The poem quiz revealed that the line between human creativity and machine imitation is becoming increasingly thin.
2. Patterns Beyond Intuition – CLiC showed me that literature can be explored not only through individual passages but also through statistical and linguistic patterns across entire corpora.
3. Visual Thinking – Voyant graphs encouraged me to “see” literature differently, turning abstract themes into concrete visual forms.
4. Collaborative Discovery – Group work underscored the value of multiple perspectives in interpreting machine-assisted results.
Ultimately, this session revealed that Digital Humanities is not about replacing traditional reading but enriching it. By combining close reading with digital tools, we can open up fresh pathways for literary analys.
Conclusion
The lab activities whether through poetry quizzes, corpus explorations, or data visualizations highlight the evolving relationship between humans, machines, and texts. As students of literature at the postgraduate level, it is important for us to embrace these new methodologies while still valuing the critical depth of human interpretation.
Digital Humanities, I realized, is not about surrendering literature to machines but about learning how machines can expand the horizons of our critical imagination.
For further information during the session :
Thank you...!!!
Be learners.
No comments:
Post a Comment