“Digitale Literaturgeschichte. Eine Versuchsreihe mit sieben Experimenten”
by Thomas Weitin, TU Darmstadt

With digital methods, we see literary history in its fullest form – analyses of large amounts of text confront the scholarly canon of mostly male authors with works that cultural memory has displaced. Many of them are by woman. Digital Literary History explains methods for comparing female and male writing, ranging from stylometry to machine learning to network analysis, and shows why many women authors have been overlooked. All data and code files will be provided.
ISBN: 978-3-662-63663-3
Download: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-63663-3

We are delighted to get a glimpse of the latest analyses of the Calderón Drama Corpus in the new pamphlet by Hanno Ehrlicher, Jörg Lehmann, Nils Reiter and Marcus Willand. English version coming up.

For the first time, the Department of History and Social Sciences of the Technische Universität Darmstadt awarded outstanding Master’s projects in the interdisciplinary research areas of “Digital Humanities”, “Urban Research” and “Transformation of Energy and Climate Policy”. The award for Digital Humanities went to Judith Brottrager’s work “The Signal and the Noise. Differentiating Stylometric Signals in the Analysis of Literary Texts “. Since January 2020, Judith Brottrager is a PhD student in the DFG-funded project “Relating the Unread. Network Models in Literary History” (Priority Programm “Computational Literary Studies”). Congratulations.

In the new pamphlet, Evelyn Gius designs a description model for the complexity of computational text analysis. The text is only available in German, but the English translation will be available soon.

Thomas Weitin, founder of the Digital Humanities Cooperation and part of the Executive Board, received a call as chair for Digital Humanities and German Literature at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. He rejected the call to remain with the Technical University of Darmstadt as Professor of German Studies – Digital Literary Studies.

The Winter Semester 2018/19 is off to a great start – Prof. Dr. Karina van Dalen-Oskam is giving a lecture on Thursday, October 11th, 2018 at 6 p.m. The title is “Perceptions of Literariness from a Digital Humanities’ Perspective: The Riddle of Literary Quality”. We are looking forward to the latest updates on the famous “Riddle of Literary Quality”-project and to the fruitful discussions afterwards!

We proudly present the english version of the fifth LitLab pamphlet “Digital Discourse Analysis” by Marcus Müller.

We congratulate our exceptional Student Researcher, Ikira Schielke, on receiving a scholarship from the German Academic Foundation. Since February 2017, Ikira is part of the Digital Humanities Cooperation, providing assistance in data processing and corpus creation.

The summer semester 2018 has started and the members of the Digital Humanities Cooperation have lots of interesting classes to offer. Here are some of them:

1. Lecture “Digital Philology: Introduction” (Thomas Weitin)

Thursday 9.50 – 11.30, room S1|03 / 223

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2. Proseminar „Phraseology“ (Marcus Müller)

Wednesday 9.50-11.30, room S4|22 / 9

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3. Seminar „Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: British Political Speeches in a linguistic and historical perspective” (Sabine Bartsch; Detlev Mares)

Wednesday 14.25-16.05, room S1|03 / 9

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4. Seminar „Why We Read Fiction“ (Thomas Weitin)

Wednesday 11.40-13.20, room S3|20 / 5

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5. Proseminar „The Fanfiction phenomenon: concepts, genres, transformations“ (Katharina Herget, Anastasia Pupynina)

Tuesday 14.25-16.05, room S1|05 / 23

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6. Seminar „The Bildungsroman. Digital Analysis“ (Thomas Weitin)

Wednesday 9.50-11.30, room S1|05 / 24

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7. Research colloquium “Digital Philology” (Sabine Bartsch, Marcus Müller, Andrea Rapp, Thomas Weitin)

Tuesday 18.05 – 19.45, room S4|22 / 6

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Latest update on the Deutscher Novellenschatz research – the new LitLab pamphlet by Thomas Weitin “Average and distinction. The Deutscher Novellenschatz between literary history and corpus analysis” is out now. Feel free to join the discussion on Twitter!

The Institute of Linguistics and Literary Studies at the TU Darmstadt is looking for a Literary Scholar specializing in “Digital Philology – Modern German Literature”. You will find more detailed information in the job description (both in English and in German).

We are delighted to announce that the fifth LitLab pamphlet on „Digital Discourse Analysis“ by Prof. Dr. Marcus Müller (TU Darmstadt) is out now. English version is coming soon. Feel free to share your comments on Twitter with @DHCooperation!

Prof. Dr. Ulrik Brandes (Algorithmics, University of Constance) has accepted the position as Chair of Social Networks (Departement of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences) at ETH Zürich beginning from November 1st. The “Reading at Scale” Project will be continued in cooperation with ETH Zürich.

We congratulate one of our exceptional Student Researchers, the medievalist Nico Kunkel, on a doctoral scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.

The summer semester 2017 has started and the members of the Digital Humanities Cooperation have lots of interesting classes to offer. Here are some of them:

1. “Digital Philology: An Introduction” (lecture by Marcus Müller)

Thursday 9.50 – 11.30, room S1|03/223

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2. “Wie wirkt Literatur” (seminar by Thomas Weitin)

Wednesday 11.40 – 13.20, room S3|20 / 5

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3. “Computer Applications in Linguistics”(seminar by Sabine Bartsch)

Friday 12.35 – 16.45, room S1|01 / A5

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4. “Corpus analysis in German Literature and Linguistics” (Conjoint seminar by Marcus Müller and Thomas Weitin)

Wednesday 9.50 – 11.30, room S4|22 / 9

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5. “Canon in the algorithmic era” (seminar by Katharina Herget)

Tuesday 09.50 – 11.40, room S1|03 / 175

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6. “Modernist Literature: Formalism” (seminar by Anastasia Pupynina and Thomas Weitin)

Tuesday 16.15 – 17.55, room S4|22 / 9

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7. “Colloquium Digital Philology” (Sabine Bartsch, Marcus Müller, Andrea Rapp, Thomas Weitin)

Tuesday 18.05 – 19.45, room S4|22 / 6

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We are most fortunate to announce that the Volkswagen Foundation approved the funding of the project “Reading at Scale”. The project will be conducted by Executive Board Members of the Digital Humanities Cooperation Thomas Weitin and Ulrik Brandes and was selected in the funding programme “Mixed Methods in the Humanities?”. The programme suggests a combination of qualitative-hermeneutical and digital procedures in collaborative hybrid projects.

We proudly present the english version of the fourth LitLab pamphlet “Falcon Topics” by Thomas Weitin and Katharina Herget.

The fourth LitLab pamphlet by Thomas Weitin and Katharina Herget on topic modeling is out now. Soon available in English!

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Stanford), Christine Ivanovic (Vienna), Sybille Krämer (Berlin) and Thomas Weitin will discuss the perspectives of digital literary studies on Friday, November 11th, at 7 p.m. at ICI Berlin.

The winter semester 2016/17 has started and the members of the Digital Humanities Cooperation have lots of interesting classes to offer. Here are some of them:

1. “Digital Humanities” (lecture by Sabine Bartsch, Andrea Rapp)

Wedi 14.25 – 16.05, in S2|17 / 103

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2. “Contemporary German” (lecture by Marcus Müller)

Tue 11.40 – 13.20, in S2|14 / 024

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3. “Digital Literary Studies” (lecture by Thomas Weitin)

Thu 9.50 – 11.30, in S2|17 / 103

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4. “Corpus and computational Linguistics I” (seminar by Sabine Bartsch)

Wed 9.50 – 11.30, in S1|03 / 204

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5. “The realistic novel” (seminar by Katharina Herget, Thomas Weitin)

Wed 11.40 – 13.20, in S1|03 / 113 (Thomas Weitin)

Tue 16.15 – 17.55, in S1|03 / 109 (Katharina Herget)

Tutorium I: Tue 11.40 – 13.20, in S1|03 / 10

Tutorium II: Tue 14.25 – 16.05, in S1|03 / 10

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6. “Academic language” (seminar by Marcus Müller)

Mon, 11.40 – 13.20, in S1|03 / 113

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7. “Computerphilology I” (seminar by Andrea Rapp)

Tue 14.25 – 16.05, in S1|01 / A3

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8. “Hermeneutik – Statistik – Kognition” (seminar by Thomas Weitin)

Wed 9.50 – 11.30, in S1|10 / 211

Tutorium: Thu 12.35 – 14.15, in S1|10 / 211

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9. “Digital Philology” (research colloquium by Sabine Bartsch, Marcus Müller, Andrea Rapp, Thomas Weitin)

Tue 18.05 – 19.45, in S4|22 / 6

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The DHC Student Researcher Evelyn Roth got accepted into the graduate student programme of the University of California in Berkeley. She is going to receive a 6 year contract and is going to write a PhD thesis in digital text analysis.

Sorry, this entry is only available in German.

The new LitLab pamphlet by Bent Gebert “The Global and the Singular. The intermediate Layers of Cultural Studies” is now availible in both English and German. Enjoy!

We are pleased to announce that the corpus and computer linguist Prof. Dr. Marcus Müller joins the Executive Board as well. Welcome!

Thomas Weitin turned down a job offer from the University of Graz and accepted a professorship for Digital Philology at the Darmstadt University of Technology starting March 2016. With his appointment the DHC turns into the Digital Humanities Cooperation between Darmstadt and Konstanz. We are very fortunate to welcome Prof. Dr. Andrea Rapp and Dr. Sabine Bartsch as new members of our executive board.

The Digital Humanities Center is delighted to announce a workshop with Dr. habil. Massimo Salgaro (Verona/Frankfurt-M.) on 22 January, 2016. Massimo Salgaro currently conducts a project on the moral dimension of literary empathy and will give a talk about his current research. Subsequently, we are going to discuss problems of interdisciplinary research between literary and cognitive studies.

The first conference of the Digital Humanities Center was entitled “Scalable Reading. Paul Heyse’s Deutscher Novellenschatz between close reading and macroanalysis” and took place on June 4-5, 2015 in the Seeburg on Lake Constance. The participants presented research projects conducted on the corpus of 86 digitized novels of the Deutscher Novellenschatz. Now you can read the summary of the interesting contributions and discussions in the conference report written by Cornelius Eggert.

Marie Revellio provides an insight into computer-based text analysis in classical philology.

Is there a female writing? The B.A. thesis by student researcher Cornelius Eggert provides interesting insights on the relation of gender and style in the Deutscher Novellenschatz.

Since September 2015 another student project is conducted at the Digital Humanities Center – Lemmatizing and word frequencies count. During the next months Eugen Stroh is going to write a bachelor’s thesis on this topic.

In the next semester the Digital Humanities Center in Constance invites two guests in order to discuss current research projects.

On November 27th, Niels Werber is coming for a session on topic modeling and network analysis of the Deutscher Novellenschatz, as well as on quantitative approaches in digital memory studies. During the winter semester we are also expecting a talk by Massimo Salgaro (Verona/ Frankfurt-am-Main) on problems of cognitive literary analysis.

For those who missed or just want to take a look again – the Iser-lecture by Franco Moretti can be found here.

On Friday, July 03, the last preparatory session for the workshop with Franco Moretti took place. Thomas Weitin taught about theory and practice of scalable reading. Now the students of the M.A. School of literary studies are excited to work with Franco Moretti in person.

On Monday, July 13th, Franco Moretti is giving the famous Iser-Lecture in the University of Constance – „Micromégas: the very small, the very large, and the space of Digital Humanities“.

Mo, 13. Juli 2015, 19 Uhr s.t.
Universität Konstanz, Senatssaal V 1001

[ Cluster of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Integration” ]

The first conference of the research initiative “Digital Humanities Center” will take place in the Seeburg on Lake Constance June 4 – 6, 2015.

The basic assumption of the conference is that the study of medium-sized corpora, which is often underestimated in digital humanities, enables us to formulate valuable, research-based answers to the basic methodological question about the relationship between qualitative and quantitative research. “Scalable Reading” stands for an integrative concept that overcomes the much-debated juxtaposition of close and distant reading and puts together conclusions derived from both interpretative reading and computer-based analysis.

[ more information | flyer (DE) ]

Since the beginning of May the study group LiNA began its existence focusing on character network analysis in the Deutscher Novellenschatz. Over the course of three semesters their research will result into two Bachelor theses in German Literature and one Master Thesis in the program „European Cultural Studies“.

[ exposé of the study group LiNa for pdf-Download]

In preparation for Franco Moretti’s talk at the Iser-Lecture and the workshop afterwards an extra Master’s seminar will be offered. Albrecht Koschorke, Marcus Twellmann and Thomas Weitin will teach one class each.

In this summer semester, Marie Revellio will teach an introductory course on digital text analysis.

[ link to course ]

The magazine of the University of Constance UniKon reported on the research center’s activities in volume No. 57 (2015).

[ article (DE) ]

In March 2014 the research initiative Digital Humanties Center was founded to coordinate the various projects in this field at the University of Konstanz.