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Lisa Rhody on Feminist Approaches to Text Analysis

Reading Against Models: Feminist Text Analysis in Theory & Practice

Computational models increasingly and often imperceptibly shape our textually-mediated selves. From what we read and share through social media to how we find research materials to the words we choose when we write an email, algorithmic description and prediction of texts constructs much of our online (and arguably offline) activities. In this talk, Dr. Lisa Rhody will consider what it means to take a feminist approach to computational text analysis–both in the digital humanities classroom and in research. Taking seriously Sarah Ahmed’s challenge to “live a feminist life,” how might reading poetry computationally inform our understanding of implicit algorithmic biases? What would a feminist text analysis look like, and how might we teach it in the digital humanities classroom?

Lisa Rhody is Deputy Director of Digital Initiatives at The Graduate Center, CUNY. There, Lisa directs the Graduate Digital Fellowship Programs, coordinates the Provost’s Digital Innovation Grants, and holds a faculty appointment in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program. As Director of Research Projects for the CUNY Academic Commons, Lisa works with the CAC team to consider ways to build scholarly research communities. She currently serves on the Executive Council of the Association for Computers in the Humanities (ACH) and on the steering committee of the NYC DH.

Formerly, Lisa was associate director of research and research assistant professor at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) at George Mason University, where she oversaw technical development of Zotero and the PressForward project.  Lisa served as editor of theJournal of Digital Humanities and Digital Humanities Now. She earned her Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Maryland. Her research combines advanced computational methods such as topic modeling and social network analysis with more traditional literary analysis to study 20th and 21st-century American literature, particularly ekphrastic poetry (poems that take the visual arts as their subject) by contemporary women poets. More broadly, she is interested in the 20th and 21st century American literature, verbal-visual studies, scholarly communication and digital humanities.

Sponsoring Organization(s):

November 8, 2019 10:00 am to 11:30 am

Alderman Library, Room 421

Event type: Lecture