Author Archives: Chris Vitale

Primary – Eric L. Tribunella, “Between Boys: Edward Stevenson’s Left to Themselves (1891) and the Birth of Gay Children’s Literature.”

Primary – Eric L. Tribunella, “Between Boys: Edward Stevenson’s Left to Themselves (1891) and the Birth of Gay Children’s Literature.”

So, the rest of you have done an incredible job with blogging this week.

In an effort to have a little fun with this, let’s put the primary text, Left to Themselves, through some distant reading. To do this, the full-text of the original work by Stevenson is pushed through Voyant-Tools, a suite of natural language processing (NLP) modules, to attempt to garner some new insights into the text. In direct opposition to close reading, distant reading, done with the help of NLP, takes a top-level high-distance approach to literature inquiry.

NOTICE: For readability and the purpose of this blog, this will be kept relatively simple.

LINK TO TOOLS/DATA USED IN THIS POST.

Let’s start with some standard elements. The text contains a total of about 63,000 words. Of that large bag of words, there are only about 7,800 unique words used in the text. Knowing this, the use and frequency of certain terms can be seen as an authorial choice to signify/identify/codify a certain idea or theme of the text.

Figure 1

.LeftToThemselves_nostop

When working with distant reading through natural language processing, one familiar product that we can create is a word cloud. The cloud shows the most frequently occurring words in the text. The larger the word, the more it appears. Stevenson’s protagonists in Left to Themselves, Gerald (379 appearances) and Philip (396 appearances), take center stage here as along with “Mr” (462 appearances). The word “touchtone” also has a large presence in the text which let’s the distant reader understand that the telephone is a major element in the text.

Figure 1 shows a strong presence of masculine identifiers in the text: father (80), man (96), boy (100). The text linguistically maintains a masculine dominance from this sort of filtered view.
So here is where we begin to have fun. Eric Tribunella uses much of his commentary to discuss the use of “human nature” to codify homosexuality into the text. How often does nature appear in the text? It appears twice.

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Okay, so Tribunella does address that the word itself isn’t necessarily used but language based hints are:

“In his preface to Left to Themselves, Stevenson uses similar language to hint at the possibility of boy readers who may want to read books depicting same- sex desire: “But there is always a large element of the young reading public to whom character in fiction, and a definite idea of human nature through fiction, and the impression of downright personality through fiction, are the main interests—perhaps unconsciously—and work a charm and influence good or bad in a very high degree” (n. pag.). That some children read literature for traces of a particular nature hints at the possibility of those who may be looking for characters who experience same-sex desire” (Tribunella).

And right when we begin to question the validity of this exploration, we are struck with this little gem. In searching the term “love” in order to explore the statement that Stevenson switches from friendship language to language of love (379), we are able to find this:

“But — if one yields to the temptation to be among the prophets, and closes his eyes, there  come, chiefly > pleasant thoughts of how good are  friendship and love and loyal service between man and man in this rugged world of ours ; and  how probable it is that such things here have  not their ending, since they have not their perfecting here, perfect as friendship and the service sometimes seem” (Stevenson).

At this point, it is obvious that applying NLP to texts such as these in comparison to secondary works like the one produced by Tribunella, we can gleam new perspectives in our research.

I implore all of you to take a moment to poke around in the above data link and see what you can find out about Left to Themselves from a distant perspective.

Method: Contemporary Young Adult Dystopias: Brave New Teenagers

Contemporary Young Adult Dystopias: Brave New Teenagers employs depth and nuance in exploring the multiplicity of themes, motivations, and effects of the genre of young adult dystopias. Each of its four parts have an autonomous aesthetic, much like the one that it addresses in “Part I Freedom and Constraint,” but when read in totality have a cohesion that I’ve yet to feel in past readings. Perhaps it is my closeness to the genre, it’s value to my own academic study, or a testament to the works it brings together, but this anthology is by far a favorite of mine to date.

Operating under the lens of a scholar of digital humanities, I am particularly attracted to one chapter of this text. Kristi McDuffie’s “Technology and Models of Literacy in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction” taps into a contemporary discourse that many digital humanities scholars are conscious of in their own work. Using this chapter as a focal point, I intend on asserting some of my key takeaways from the larger text.

Kristi McDuffie positions the following thesis for her chapter:

“A common theme of this genre is that in the future, due to significant technological advances, many people have lost traditional forms of literacy like writing by hand. This fear that technology is causing illiteracy is widespread in contemporary society today, where teachers, parents, popular essayists, and others complain about the current generation’s addiction to texting and reluctance to read. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that these fears should emerge in texts aimed at young adults themselves.” (McDuffie, p. 145).

Before diving into her primary works, McDuffie takes a valuable detour into non-fiction. Fear is the major theme here and throughout the larger genre of YA dystopia. Technophobia in particular is illustrated to be a trend in non-fiction that has a mirror in YA dystopia. Discussing concepts like the cognitive effects of technology use via John Brockman’s Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net’s Impact on Our Minds and Future (2011), Hayles generational attention differences manifested in deep versus hyper attention of older and younger generations respectively, as well as the stupefication of youth through social media fueled selfishness and substanceless media consumption in the digital age via Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (2008) (McDuffie).

McDuffie then reads four YA dystopian novels: M.T. Anderson’s Feed, Ally Condie’s Matched, Scott Westerfield’s Uglies, and Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother.

Feed is chosen for its mirroring of non-fiction fears of illiteracy driven by technology. Anderson uses the trope of ultra-futuristic extremes of technology to create a world where people’s communication occurs through implants directly housed in their brains. This sort of technology is both invasive and uncomfortable for the reader. Over exaggeration of contemporary colloquial language is used to illustrate a growing illiteracy within the pages of Feed. We read an excerpt of the novel that is cringe worthy to say the least. The technological advances made in person to person communication that allow people to be less reliant on language and speaking are an obvious commentary on the use of mobile and web based communication. This kind of fear of traditional literacy being replaced by new forms of communication is something that many scholars face. In the humanities in particular, using technology to peer review, blogging, and using social media to discuss academic issues is often criticized for dumbing down our ability at an academic caliber. This very blog post may be looked upon with distrustful eyes from more traditional scholars who do not understand the value of open commentary.

“Reading and Writing as Resistance in Matched” is a section that addresses the place of traditional literacy in a technologically advanced society. The world of Matched has outlawed these traditional forms of literacy. Here, again, we see a fear taken to an extreme in an attempt to comment on a greater question of modernizing societies. In an act of rebellion, the protagonist reads, then writes. Traditional literacy in this text is presented as a beautiful and freeing form in contrast to the controls and detriment of technology. This romantic relationship with the forms of old emerge when questions of archives and digitization arise in digital humanities. What do we do with the handwritten texts? What do we do with material once it is digitized? What is the value of handwriting in academia when we can produce directly on our multiplicity of devices? As print culture dies a slow, painful death, where will print artifacts and methodologies fit into the scheme of the future.

McDuffie’s exploration of Uglies follows a similar vein. Traditional and digital literacy is at odds with one another. The view of it is complicated. The black and white assumptions of the question are easily oversimplified and it takes a nuanced discussion and approach to truly dig deep. Moving to multiliteracies, we are faced with models of literacy that do not favor traditional or digital, but rather incorporate the two together. The agency of traditional and digital literacy is provided as the most productive approach to understanding the two and their place in society.

Finally, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow is presented as a prime source for understanding digital literacy. Digital literacy is provided as a form of agency for the protagonist of this text. In a police state driven by surveillance and monitoring, technological literacy allows the protagonist to gain a sense of control. Rather than allow the imposing technological destruction of society, the protagonist becomes an empowered resistor. Technology in this text plays both positive and negative roles, but the main theme is the ability to operate with powerful freedom in an otherwise restricted society due to the digital literacy of a young and intelligent person. Resistance is not limited, but rather it is fueled by technology in this text. This is an attitude that digital humanities scholars hold close to themselves. Technology is not threatening academia. It is empowering academics to explore quantitative, collaborative, and immersive theories and methodologies that have not been available to us before. Accessibility of primary and secondary sources is exploding as archives grow and more people come online. The sciences are no longer the only place for data to be manipulated and employed to create arguments. Digital humanities has a lot invested in the development of digital literacy. The relationship between traditional and digital literacy is something that many are continuing to flesh out. YA dystopian literature is an important part of that equation because of it’s audience and the fact that as this audience grows, what we say now will have a direct effect on the future of our institutions. For better or for worse.

The Lorax – Response

Let’s start by offering up the interesting back matter found on current copies of The Lorax:

“UNLESS someone like you,

cares a whole awful lot,

nothing is going to get better.

It’s not.—The Lorax

Nearly forty years ago, when Random House first published Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, it sent forth a clarion call—to the industry and consumers alike—to conserve the earth’s precious and finite natural resource. The message of it’s whimsical yet powerful tale resonates today more profoundly than ever. In every corner of the world we are at risk of losing real-life Brown Bar-ba-loots, Swomee-Swans, Humming-Fish, Truffula Trees, and the forests they inhabit.

Together, Dr. Seuss Enterprises and Random House proudly sponsor The Lorax Project, an ongoing multifaceted initiative designed to raise awareness of environmental issues and inpsire earth-friendly action worldwide by passionate individuals of all ages.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises and Random House support conservation groups around the world to enhance critical activities needed to protect the real-life Lorax forests, whose preservation is essential to all life on our planet” (Seuss, The Lorax).

The front cover of newer copies of The Lorax also comes stamped with “earth-friendly, printed on recycled paper” (Seuss, The Lorax).

Before even opening the book, readers are given explicit indication of the political implications of the text.

As a researcher of children’s picturebooks, Continue reading →

Japan Cuts the Humanities and Social Sciences

Some of you expressed interest in Japan’s order to close Humanities, Law, and Social Science departments in their universities. This is an important moment for higher education. It is also one that is going on under the radar for the most part.

TIME: Alarm Over Huge Cuts to Humanities and Social Sciences at Japanese Universities

The World University Rankings: Social sciences and humanities faculties ‘to close’ in Japan after ministerial intervention

Bloomburg View: Japan Dumbs Down Its Universities

Marah Gubar’s “Risky Business” – Method

What does it mean to be a child? Out of Marah Gubar’s “Risky Business”, three models of childhood, and in effect three models for developing children’s literature theory, emerge.

Borrowing from ideas rooted in psychology, Gubar argues, “viewing children as deficient—as unable to grasp certain concepts or skills—can help produce the very incapacities we claim merely to describe” (451). Gubar refers to the deficit model and explains that this line of thinking breeds questions like, “why share poetry with children if they cannot be expected to comprehend it?” She then contends, “To treat young people in this condescending way is to adhere to a deficit model of childhood, whereby young people are viewed as lacking the abilities, skills, and powers that adults have” (451). This is has an inherent negativity and is understood to be an ineffective model for theorizing children’s literature. If the field of children’s literature employed this model, the work generated would be show overwhelming bias against it being a child.

The second, and equally problematic model introduced is the difference model. Gubar posits that the difference model of childhood “[stresses] the radical alterity or otherness of children, representing them as a separate species, categorically different from adults” (451). This postcolonial (see the use of self and other in Edward Said “Orientalism”) identification system creates an unfair dichotomy between the child and the adult. At this level of theoretical development, the adult will always be the self. The otherness of the child is a product of the model. Being a child is, here, defined as not being an adult. It is an oversimplification of the question and a model that disallows the child to be anything but a not-adult.

From here, Marah Gubar introduces a possible third model for children’s literature theory to aspire to. Gubar reasons for the kinship model in the following excerpt:

“It is my contention that these texts—which young people had a hand in creating—are worth studying not just because they are critically neglected (although they are), or because we need to make our conception of what children’s literature is more flexible and inclusive (although we do), but also because their content often helps us theorize in more nuanced ways about what it means to be a child, to have a voice, and to exercise agency. These texts are serving as an inspiration for me in developing what I call the kinship model of childhood. This model is premised on the idea that children and adults are akin to one another, which means they are neither exactly the same nor radically dissimilar. The concept of kinship indicates relatedness, connection, and similarity without implying homogeneity, uniformity, and equality” (453).

The kinship model is Gubar’s attempt to fray the otherwise finite boundaries between child and adult. The two distinctions overlap. They are in many ways malleable, conforming to a variety of nuanced identifiers. In many ways, it is easy to agree with Gubar’s development of such a model. The lines between child and adult are often constructs of a particular society or culture. To say that a child is a deficit of an adult, different than an adult, means that we must provide a clear definition of the line that exists between the two. This would be an everchanging boundary.

Gubar goes so far as to say, “It is dehumanizing and potentially disabling to say that a human being has no voice, or no agency” (453). While, these types of stances have an air of melodramaticism, there is something to be said of a model that forces superiority of one subgroup over another subgroup of human beings.

Protecting herself from those who understand the semantic necessity of using a word like child, Gubar orients herself with:

“The kinship model, by its very existence as a model of what it means to be a child, accepts the idea that the category “child” is necessary as a result of this original state of dependency. At the same time, however, it holds that children and adults are separated by differences of degree, not of kind, meaning that we should eschew difference-model discourse that depicts children as a separate species in favor of emphasizing that growth is a messy and unpredictable continuum. There is no one moment when we suddenly flip over from being a child to being an adult” (455).

Gubar outlines the distinction between the deficit and kinship models by arguing:

“Whereas the deficit model portrays children as universal novices who must overcome an across-the-board array of incapacities, the kinship model maintains that development is not always linear, meaning children sometimes have abilities that adults lack, such as a greater facility for learning new languages” (455).

We can not abandon the idea of the child. We should not avoid it in our exploration of children’s literature. Rather, we should be aware of the dangers of particular perspectives that we bring to our theories and methods of inquiry.

This approach is familiar for digital humanists. As we continue to define what it is to be a digital humanist, many see value or danger in using such words. The postcolonial self and other attitudes are active in many debates and the categorization/oversimplification of the other has a valuable parallel.