Many areas of literary studies are concerned with questions of geography and national identity. By using digital libraries and computational techniques, we can address these areas in new ways. How, for example, did writing by migrants to Britain differ from that of their native-born peers in the years before World War II? Are American authors less international in their geographic outlook than are writers from other nations? To which kinds of social, political, and economic events does literature most directly respond? This talk will answer all of these questions, describe the specific methods involved, and offer suggestions for future research in the field.
Please read this paper by Matt Wilkens in advance! "Is American fiction too provincial?"
Matthew Wilkens is Associate Professor of Information Science at Cornell University (USA). His work uses quantitative and computational methods to study large-scale developments in literary and cultural history. He is the director of the Textual Geographies project, a founding editorial board member of the Journal of Cultural Analytics, and the author of Revolution: The Event in Postwar Fiction.
