What are We Looking for When We Read Computationally?

This workshop will start with some very fundamental questions about why we might want to use computational methods to read texts, and what kinds of questions we can ask (so far). Understanding the limits of computational text analysis is just as important as learning ‘what to do.’ We will then look at a variety of approaches to text analysis, which might vary according to the scope and scale and genre of the project, as well as with the kind of questions we want to ask. After this very broad survey, we will focus on one tool—google pinpoint—and see how we might use it as a first step towards analyzing the contents of our sources.