Scholarly Works, English
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Browsing Scholarly Works, English by Content Type "Video"
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- Digital Discussions in the Humanities and Social Sciences: "Are Common Topics Common? Rhetorical Questions and Computational Methods"Hart-Davidson, William (2013-09-18)William Hart-Davidson, Associate Professor of Rhetoric & Writing and Co-Director of the Writing in Digital Environments (WIDE) Research Center at Michigan State University, will discuss his research that highlights the potential uses of mathematical and computational models for studying contemporary online communication. "In this talk, I will make the case for using mathematical models to render internet discussion threads as computational objects. The focus of my presentation is less on the techniques, however, than on the correspondence between the mathematical models and concepts from rhetorical theory, beginning with the way both human coders and our computer model focus on basic units of analysis, and discussing how these units are understood to form larger discursive structures such as arguments. I’ll show how our research group came to understand random graph (Erdös-Rényi random graphs) and network analysis techniques (Eigen-vector centrality) to provide us with a means of describing and, perhaps, predicting the way discussion threads develop over time."
- Ideal CitiesMeitner, Erika S. (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2012-09)Erika Meitner discusses her new book: Ideal Cities. This collection of autobiographical narrative and lyric poems explores the relationship between body and place—specifically the pleasures and dangers of women’s corporeal experiences. Ideal Cities is guided by an epigraph from Song of Songs, and the metaphorical idea of bodies as cities, and cities as bodies. How do women’s bodies become sites of inscription via sex, childbirth, and other highly physical acts? These poems also investigate urban, suburban, and rural borderlands. Who do we leave behind or look past? What do we discard, as purposeful markers or accidental refuse? How can these people, places, and objects be woven into larger ideas about nature, sense of place, home, exile, and both personal and collective memory?
- PurgatoryMann, Jeff (2014-02-18)
- Stephen Crane: A life of fireSorrentino, Paul M. (2014-09-23)With the exception of Poe, no American writer has proven as challenging to biographers as the author of The Red Badge of Courage. Stephen Crane's short, compact life—"a life of fire," he called it—continues to be surrounded by myths and half-truths, distortions and outright fabrications. Mindful of the pitfalls that have marred previous biographies, Paul Sorrentino has sifted through garbled chronologies and contradictory eyewitness accounts, scoured the archives, and followed in Crane's footsteps. The result is the most complete and accurate account of the poet and novelist written to date. Whether Crane was dressing as a hobo to document the life of the homeless in the Bowery, defending a prostitute against corrupt New York City law enforcement, or covering the historic charge up the San Juan hills as a correspondent during the Spanish-American War, his adventures were front-page news. From Sorrentino's layered narrative of the various phases of Crane's life a portrait slowly emerges. By turns taciturn and garrulous, confident and insecure, romantic and cynical, Crane was a man of irresolvable contradictions. He rebelled against tradition yet was proud of his family heritage; he lived a Bohemian existence yet was drawn to social status; he romanticized women yet obsessively sought out prostitutes; he spurned a God he saw as remote yet wished for His presence. Incorporating decades of research by the foremost authority on Crane's work, Stephen Crane: A life of fire sets a new benchmark for biographers.