Speaker
Ben Schmidt, New York University
Time
Tuesday, March 10, 5:00–6:00
Place
60 5th Avenue, 7th floor Open Space
Title
Digital Humanities and Data Science
Abstract
What is digital humanities, and how does it relate to data science at NYU? This talk will discuss some of the ways humanists at NYU and elsewhere are using computation in their work, will describe some of the cultural datasets humanists work with at NYU, and suggest some possible avenues for future collaboration between humanities departments and data scientists.
Bio
Benjamin Schmidt is Director of Digital Humanities at New York University. Previously, he was an assistant professor of history at Northeastern University and core faculty at the NuLab for Texts, Maps, and Networks. His research interests are in the digital humanities and the intellectual and cultural history of the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. His digital humanities research focuses on large-scale text analysis, humanities data visualization, and the challenges and opportunities of reading data itself as a historical source. His current project, Creating Data, explores practices of data collection in the 19th century American state through archival research, visualization, and re-analysis of historical data. He also contributes to popular conversations on topics including higher education in the United States, computational detection of anachronisms in historical fiction, and the “crisis” of the humanities.