Job Talks: Assistant Professor in Historical Studies and Digital Humanities at Central European University, Vienna
An intriguing aspect of conducting digitally enhanced research consists of the intertwined nature of humanistic topics, sources, research questions, and methods with the insertion of digital tools. However, one issue that publishing such projects can entail is to harmonize the content included in the output with the diversity of the intended target audience. Producing content that is relevant and informative to both humanists and technology experts can present difficulties. The following paper constitutes an experimental endeavor to approach the analysis of the same material, the Japanese Mito School’s monumental historical work, the Dai Nihon shi (1657-1906) from multiple perspectives, based upon a more traditional method, followed by the creative application of Natural Language Processing with a more technical documentation. I will showcase a possible utilization and the value of juxtaposing two methods towards a more multilayered examination of the same corpus while strengthening the representation of under-resourced languages in DH. In addition, I will argue that the Dai Nihon shi and the Mito School can be considered manifestations of the concept of “central margins” by placing a historical work and its creators into the spotlight which, despite their significance in intellectual history, have been under-represented in the existing literature and have been portrayed in a somewhat narrow sense, primarily in relation to their violent involvement in the turbulent mid-19th century Japanese political scene.
Dr. Alíz Horváth (East Asian Languages and Civilizations PhD, University of Chicago ‘19) has extensive experience researching and teaching on the history and mechanisms of transnational flows within and beyond East Asia with a focus on Japan, China, and Korea, intertwining digital and more traditional methods. She recently co-guest edited a special issue on East Asian studies and DH for the International Journal of Digital Humanities with Hilde De Weerdt. Furthermore, she is also co-founder and chair of the DARIAH Multilingual DH Working Group, a member of the Core Editorial Team for the DARIAH sustained metablog, OpenMethods, a topic editor of the Asian and Asian Diaspora studies section of Reviews in DH, and contributor to the pioneering NEH-funded project, New Languages for NLP: Building Linguistic Diversity in the Digital Humanities, organized by Princeton University and DARIAH.