The Data that Divides Us: Methods and Frameworks for Data Across the Humanities
What is data in the humanities? What relationships do humanists have with data? What is the place of data in humanistic inquiry? These questions are pressing in our era of rapid technological transformation, one which is increasingly predicated on creating and consuming data at ever larger scales. With the rapidly growing power of data over various aspects of our lives, it has been said that "data is the new oil." And as data science increasingly moves into interdisciplinary spaces, humanists’ perspectives are essential.
MoreBrault examines the promise of data as the opportunity to examine methods, to do something new and to vary methods, to scale claims and the type and amount of evidence presented to substantiate them, and to deepen and complicate arguments.
Jessica Otis from George Mason University and Dagomar Degroot from Georgetown University discuss the intricate relationship between catastrophe and data through early modern sources.
What do we make of the quantifying impulse in response to danger? What of the affective affordances of putting danger in the form of numbers or visualizations? How do divides in data literacy set up stark material divides when data represents life-threatening dangers?
On May 30th, 2024, as part of the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar Series, "The Data that Divides Us: Recalibrating Data Methods for New Knowledge Frameworks Across the Humanities", at the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) at Stanford University, Chiara Palladino from Furman University, Chris Johanson from University of California, Los Angeles, and Eric Harvey from Stanford University talked about the ways they envision 'Ancient Data' and the challenges they face working with it.