Kath Bode (Australian National University): “Data beyond representation: Thoughts on the shift from computational modelling to performative materiality”

Because models are arguments about, rather than descriptions of, literary phenomena, modelling offers a richer, more flexible framework for such research than earlier, positivist approaches. But what are the things-in-the-world that we model when we transition from print cultural objects, such books, to mass-digitised (and digitalised) collections? In asking where our new “texts” begin and/or end – and whether we should think of them as “texts” at all – this discussion session will consider the limits of representational frameworks for data modelling and the possibilities of a performative materialist approach.

Katherine Bode is Professor of literary and textual studies at the Australian National University. She is the author or co-editor of books including A World of Fiction: Digital Collections and the Future of Literary History (2018), Advancing Digital Humanities: Research, Methods, Theories (2014), Reading by Numbers: Recalibrating the Literary Field (2012) and Resourceful Reading: eResearch, the New Empiricism, and Australian Literary Culture (2009).