Oh, this semester is almost over! It was one heck of a ride. Even though we were struggling with our courses and stressed about the lockdown and COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to manage to work as a team.  If you have been following our blogs, you’d know we are students at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon enrolled in the Introduction to Digital Humanities course: ENGL 256B. We have been learning about digital tools all semester in order to combine them in one monumental and meaningful final project. Our Digital Humanities course really gave us an eye-opening adventure to discover tools used in the humanities world through the help of the digital world. It’s really exciting how these two fields work hand in hand to create a fascinating platform for research and development.

Throughout our course, we learned the methods of close and distant reading and how they each contribute to the research implemented. Close reading is the physical act of reading and diving into the book’s world and analyzing based on feeling and close observation of style and interpretations. Distant reading, on the other hand, gathers information that is not always possible for a reader to do so when reading hundreds of pages of different documents or books. Distant reading is where digital humanities come to play an obvious role, for they are responsible for attaining tons of interesting and ground-breaking data that may not have been obvious or even easy to attain. 

Throughout our semester, we used Voyant Tools, which is a literary textual analysis platform, and Google MyMaps, which is a digital platform that we used to map literary texts and authors’ lives, to finally present our digital ‘story’ and research findings using the visually interactive slideshow Timeline JS. 

We know that in our previous blogs we kind of gave a hint here and there about our final project and now the time has finally come to tell you all about it! Working for this Final DH project combined everything we learned in this course since the very first day. The title of our project is: “Dr. Seuss’s Imaginative and Informative Style of Writing in Children’s Books”.

Who is Dr. Seuss, you might ask? Formerly known as Theodore Seuss Geisel, most well known for his pen name Dr. Seuss. He is one of the most beloved children’s authors who incorporates life lessons with a unique writing style through several techniques such as rhyming and the use of nonsensical words.

We chose Dr.Seuss’s work to be the topic of our project because of the great impact he had on the generations of children and adults alike. While creating stories that shine on concepts like creativity, imagination, activism, acceptance, independence, perseverance and possibility through playful humor for children, Dr. Seuss also left behind serious moral and political messages, especially after World War II, for adults such as democracy, prejudice, imagination, ecology, war, and peace to appreciate indirectly. 

The main goal of our project  was to investigate how Dr. Seuss’s work managed to impact both children and adults morally and educationally. We explored his unique style of writing and his use of imaginary lexical inventions and other techniques to form a conclusion on the impact that his stories create for all ages. Our findings were conducted through the help of the digital humanity tools!

We chose to focus our research on four of his famous books: The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Oh the Places You’ll Go and The Lorax. 

We were interested in his choice of rhetorical strategies and how he was able to persuade readers and deliver indirect moral and political messages. The main purpose of our project was to make use of our Digital Humanity tools in order to answer our Research questions. With textual analysis, we identified the most common words used in the books, their difficulty, and techniques. First, we read the four books and analyzed them closely. Then, we  used Voyant  to analyze them distantly. Thus, we searched for the most recurrent words and analyzed our books accordingly. Moreover, we used Google My Map where we mapped the author’s life, book publications, and his book tours.

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From the beginning of our DH course and the formation of the groups, we were interested in children’s literature. We researched many topics, but in the end, we chose Dr.Seuss as we all grew up reading his stories and have many memories with them, so this particular topic caught our attention. We conducted several types of research regarding his life, work, education, achievements, books, and analytical studies about his works. What piqued our interest the most was his style of writing and how he was able to greatly influence children. As a result, we shaped our research questions accordingly. Since we set a groundwork with the extensive research we did regarding Dr. Seuss, this allowed us throughout our project to remain convinced and confident with what we were exploring. Moreover, upon utilizing different tools, we got promising results that helped us stay on the same track we had first intended for our project and did not find the need to change its direction. 

Now, let’s walk you through our DH Project journey starting with Google MyMaps. We can all agree, (and we hope you would as well!) that it’s probably one of the nicest tools to use, whether it was for professional or personal reasons. Being able to personalize a real map for your own purpose was so exciting.  It’s really a great platform with the perfect visuals. For our project, we originally thought that we may find it difficult to map anything, but with just enough research, we were impressed with the results we found. Sadly, we were unable to map his literary texts because no countries or cities were ever mentioned, and all his stories were imaginative scenarios, so we had to get creative with our findings, and hope that we could find some sort of pattern or revelation that would strengthen our research interests. After some intensive research and online close reading, we eventually mapped a time sequence of Dr. Seuss’s entire life. We created 6 layers on our map, one for each of our 6 research topics, and created icons of different colors and shapes to distinguish each of the layers when they are all visible. First, we mapped out a time sequence of Dr. Seuss’s achievements and studies throughout his life and career. This helped us better understand how his life experiences developed his achievements and led him to create the stories and cartoons that are so loved by the world. Second, we mapped out the main locations he lived throughout his life which allowed us to understand the regions that were first exposed to his work at the time of their publications and how he became famous. Third, we mapped out the locations of book publications and movie productions which gave us an idea of the areas that were first exposed to Dr. Seuss’s line of work and to what extent his work was accepted. It also allowed us to identify the level of popularity of his books and cartoons and the level of demand for his work being used in modern methods of production. Then, we mapped out the location of countries that translated his books which helped us learn about the impact he had on the rest of the world. Finally, we mapped the locations of his posthumous honors and monuments. Mapping out such information truly helped us understand Dr. Seuss’s professional career,  how his life experiences developed his skills, how his locations may have impacted his national and worldwide achievements, and also allow us to identify his level of popularity and the demand for his work in modern methods of production. Although it was a lot of work, the ability to share the map with each other to work simultaneously got the job done. Teamwork gets the dream work!

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Another one of our tools used during our DH Project journey was Google Books Ngram Viewer, which is a search engine that plots a user-defined set of ‘strings’ or words on a frequency versus time graph, showing the trend of words found throughout the years in publications, online websites and platforms, and even some of the historical digitized works. However, this tool has not been updated since 2008, so results after 2008 are not beneficial. For our project, we tried searching for the names of our book titles but yielded no results. In fact, it was difficult for us to collect important information for our research questions. However, we did search for Dr. Seuss, to get a clearer idea of when he became most popular (which by the way was around 2003-2004), and why he was a trendy figure even during our childhood and teenage years as well, and much after his death. We concluded that his books greatly impacted millennials and this explains why he became extremely famous around that time. 

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Moreover, the bulk of our analysis for our project was based on utilizing Voyant tools. Voyant tools allowed us to dig deeper into our four chosen texts. We first started with analyzing the Beginner books : The Cat and The Hat and Green Eggs and Ham in order to investigate how such words could have an influence on children in writing and speaking.  Regarding the difficulty of the texts, the vocabulary density was very low. This showed that there was a substantial amount of repetition of the words in the books and that it had a very simple language that is logical and easily understood for emerging English readers. Most of the words in the Beginner books are monosyllabic and had a lot of rhyming to it. This made sense since these books were designed to teach reading and not overwhelm a child with too many different words. This is also ideal because the child encounters the same word many times. The first time you see the word — you have to sound it out, and Seuss’s end rhymes give you clues to pronunciation. Subsequent times, seeing the word offers a sense of mastery for the child. 

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As for the Message Books analysis, Voyant allowed us to notice the very small and genius techniques and details in Dr. Seuss’s works. Starting with Oh, the Places You’ll Go, it was so exciting to notice his insistence of using words starting with all the letters of the alphabet (except z) in his rhyming poem, which significantly increased the vocabulary density of the words used compared to his Beginner Books. Additionally, his poem was filled with acronym pairs from the start all the way till the end, as he subtly explains the journey of life for adults to understand, and for children to appreciate while looking at colorful and fun illustrations. In fact, Oh, the Places You’ll Go was the last book that he wrote, and was based on his life experiences. That was a really nice fact to know when combined with the information gathered from Voyant Tools. Also, The Lorax was an extremely illustrative story filled with messages in both his texts and cartoons about the importance of saving the environment, both of which adults and children would appreciate alike. We realized the different trends spreading across his works; although both of these books were meant to educate and send a message, each had a special way of conveying the message through his broad techniques.

The distant reading analyses could not have been made clearer without the use of some close reading. His techniques were not purely literary; he included many visual designs and illustrations that would psychologically ensure that the moral and informative messages are clear to the reader.  Close reading is an important aspect to formulate concise findings and results for our research. Up till now, distant reading and digital analysis are still unable to independently function without human intervention.

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Using Timeline JS as our primary digital platform for our final project helped us wrap up our research findings in a visually appealing way. It allowed us to convey our story where the readers can interact with the material and at the same to present a playful and colorful ambience through snippets of  Dr. Seuss’s illustrations, cartoons, and works of his important milestones to ultimately reach a holistic view of him. Each slide was matched with unique visuals that go hand in hand with the text and this further highlighted the importance of his impactful techniques through art. We were very impressed to find that Dr. Seuss’s artwork had an equal significance to his literary texts, and this would not have been evident to us if it weren’t for Timeline’s advantageous features that allow viewers to engage in more than just text. This further confirms our research findings that Dr. Seuss’s technique to influence children doesn’t stem purely from his educational degree, but also from his artistic integrity. This was also backed up by our mapping analysis of his life on Google My Map, when he decided to drop out of his postgraduate college to chase his dreams of drawing cartoons. It was a fruitful experience using Timeline JS. 

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During this semester, every assignment and lecture we had to do and attend for the Digital Humanities course contributed in helping us build and finalize our final project. After thorough research and work on the different tools we were introduced to, as well as their application on the work of the author we have chosen, we can proudly say that our  team achieved the main goals we articulated in our first project proposal and we are satisfied with our results because they reflected our objectives.

Since the beginning of the course, we were encouraged to document and share our DH experiences on platforms such as Twitter and WordPress via tweets and blogs respectively. With every new experience comes mixed feelings and an opportunity for reflection. At first, WordPress was a bit challenging because it was a new platform for all of us. However, with the guidance of Dr. Najla Jarkas we were able to build our individual blogs. The more regular blogging we did, the more we got the hang of it! Organizing our blogs in such a way helped us to arrange the ideas for our DH project. We feel that WordPress was the perfect platform to unite everything we learned and implemented throughout the semester. While this may be the last blog we write related to our Digital Humanities course, it certainly won’t be the last one we ever write on our WordPress Blog. We definitely intend on using this blog to publish regular posts on several topics that might interest us! Also, our encounter with Twitter was a unique one, as many of us didn’t use this platform before this course. After making accounts and learning the ins-and-outs of Twitter, we followed many digital humanities pages worldwide which allowed us to understand the impact of Digital Humanities on our lives. Along the ride, we really enjoyed tweeting the progress of our project every week and filling our homepages with DH news and gifs to convey our excitement. 

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller

This quote sums up how we feel about working in a group, especially in this course that demanded almost all our work be done in groups. When the semester started, we were always in each other’s company in the beloved Fisk Lab, where we could work together and communicate openly and the ideas would flow. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of university, we weren’t able to meet up to work. This put a slight strain on our work in the beginning, trying to set up group calls and organize a set time to work all together was a bit hard with all the chaos happening. At the same time, being in a group helped as we were all pushing each other to work and get our work done in the best way possible even with all the obstacles we faced. With the semester coming to an end we can proudly say that with dedication and good team spirit we were able to push ourselves to new heights and reach the goals and outcomes of our project. 

ENGL256B has been unlike any other course we have taken in AUB. As our journey comes to an end, our knowledge about the digital humanities has expanded. Mediating two worlds stemming from two completely different aspects and cultivating humanity into what is seemingly so robotic. This course granted us the opportunity to learn about new tools and directly apply them in the Fisk Lab (Our class destination) on our desktops and laptops. We constantly worked in teams which helped individually expand our scope of thinking. We’re so sad to say this is the end, this is goodbye. It was an absolute joy taking ENGL256B, it brought out the mini blogger in us, and we recommend it to any student looking to expand their knowledge on unique tools and the digital world mixed with humanities!

Finally, we would like to thank Dr. Najla for her continuous effort and support during this whole semester. Without her dedication we wouldn’t have learned about the beneficial tools in this course 🙂 Check out our final TimelineJS project here.

Written by: Dalia Bekdache, Mirriam Hijazi, Raghad Sheronick, and Sara Deeb

Cover By: ASOCCE / ZEMOS98

“You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need are Digital Humanities tools!”

– is a quote by Dr. Seuss that we adopted, except that we tweaked it just a little bit to our liking. (Can you guess what we changed?) Welcome back, readers! We hope you and your families are safe and healthy during such difficult times with the global pandemic COVID-19. 

This blog is about our TimelineJS final project for our Introduction to Digital Humanities course (ENGL256B) at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. We will be introducing you to TimelineJS – which in short is a digital humanities tool- and we’ll be discussing our project, experiences, and providing our feedback and outcomes. TimelineJS is an extremely interesting tool that we’d like you to know about. More importantly, we’re really excited to share more about our project which we have previously revealed and worked on in Blog No. 3. 

Our digital humanities project is about investigating Dr. Seuss’s imaginative and informative style of works in his children’s books. We’ve conducted lots of research through digital tools like Voyant Tools and Google MyMaps and we’ll be investigating more deeply through close reading analysis to complete our exciting journey and calm our curiosity. That being said, TimelineJS’s role is to help us wrap up all our work into one slideshow presenting our interesting findings and results! In fact, get ready to take a look at our timeline because we believe our style (thanks to TimelineJS) is just as interesting as Dr. Seuss’s works! 

Telling a story can come in many different shapes and forms. In order to make our research come to life, this ‘coming to life’ emerges from the ability to capture and visualize data in a way that is appealing and interesting to the reader. Often, we deal with huge amounts of information, sometimes leaving the researcher at a loss as to how to articulate this information- this is where Timeline JS comes in. You might be wondering what Timeline JS is; Timeline JS is an open-source digital tool created by Knights Labs that enables its users to easily create multimedia interactive timelines around specific topics or events that engage readers in a visually appealing manner. TimelineJS allows us to convey a story where our readers can interact with the material and get snippets of images, audio, and works of the important milestones of a character to ultimately reach a holistic view of him/her.  It is a very user-friendly tool and all you really need to know is how to use an online Google Drive excel spreadsheet, and thus must have a Gmail account. So have fun spicing up your time data-driven story and checking it out yourselves!

To create a timeline, you must follow four simple steps as outlined on the website. There is no need to download any software or sign up for the website. You can download a template spreadsheet from the website and input your own data into that sheet. For those who aren’t as ‘technologically inclined’, they have been so kind as to post a video tutorial which is helpful in showing you how it’s all put together. It also opens the opportunity for groups of students collaborating on a single Google spreadsheet to produce a common timeline (like us!). Teamwork gets the job done! 

Timeline JS is approachable and relatively easy to use; the excel sheet is prepared with a ready-to-fill table which makes working with such a tool more straightforward. All you need to do is add in the information you gathered and figure out a way to put it together in a meaningful way. The data is organized chronologically so that it best complements your research in a clean, elegant interface. Under the guidance of Dr. Najla Jarkas at the American University of Beirut, we learned how to use the spreadsheet in order to accomplish specific tasks.  Each row of cells in your spreadsheet represents one slide in your timeline. You can add specific dates and time, title, text, multimedia in all forms (Youtube, Google Maps, SoundCloud, images, websites, Wikipedia, Twitter, Flickr, etc) and captions. Publishing various media tools was very appealing to us during our encounter with the tool; all we had to do was copy the URL of the desired media and paste it in the designated column. We learned how to import images, videos, audio, tweets, colors, and gifs. When you generate your timeline this is where the magic takes place. It is where you see all the work you’ve done in the spreadsheet take a livery and colorful form that translates your ideas and thoughts into an easy to use dynamic project. You can move through the different sections with ease and see how the media you’ve imported fits in with the text and background creating a seamless experience.

A snippet of our TimelineJS Spread Sheet

Going back to our project on investigating Dr. Seuss’s imaginative and informative works for children’s books, TimelineJS gave us a clear vision of how we would present our final work. Dr. Seuss’s fame arose from his ability to combine his cartoons and drawings into his literary works to present a deeper connection with the readers. He combined several techniques from both art and literature to portray messages through the use of a rather simple ‘language’ for all ages to easily and cheerfully absorb. Presenting our work through traditional tools like PowerPoint presentations definitely does not do it justice. TimelineJS presents an exciting preprogrammed template to showcase our work in ways that we believe would grab the viewer’s attention. We would like to make our viewers feel that they are living in Dr. Seuss’s world and his works, and we believe that TimelineJS can do just that. 

For example, instead of having us include excerpts of The Lorax which is a famous book written by Dr. Seuss, we are able to incorporate a part of the audiobook via Soundcloud read by Rik Mayyal. This offers new depths to our audience and allows us to unlock a new dimension which may not be possible with other traditional tools. Moreover, we can take advantage of what TimelineJS has to offer by using GIFs of Dr. Seuss’s famous ‘truffula trees’ cartoon as a background in the slide. This further stresses the importance of nature in The Lorax to the reader and helps convey the message behind it, which is to save the environment and at the same time present a colorful and attractive background. Additionally, the large background could serve as a means to allow the reader to jump into the book’s world through moving pictures.

Furthermore, TimelineJS’s template allows the reader to equally focus on the media as well as the text presented by scaling pictures and the background to be much larger than the text for the viewer to better enjoy. It allows just enough text per slide so as not to bore the reader (but ensures that the message is loud and clear- of course), and allows them to engage with the background and media that can add lots of value when presented properly. In our case, we’re excited to present our findings through Voyant Tools, Google MyMaps, Youtube, SoundCloud, and more! TimelineJS also helped us formulate an easy outline for our project. Its template provides a simple and facilitated outcome for viewers and ensures that the ideas are captured in groups and snippets to portray the ideas clearly.

The fact that TimelineJS allows us to use various media outlets makes a great contribution to enabling the user to connect more deeply with the character and also makes the timeline more authentic and credible. In the case of Google MyMaps, viewers would be able to gain access to our map, view our preallocated pins, descriptions, and gain a lot of their own visual information besides reading our texts on each slide.

As we worked with Timeline throughout the semester, we didn’t face difficulties per-say more like inconveniences. For example, some media wouldn’t appear when publishing due to errors in the link we pasted on the excel sheet or in the source.  However, we managed to solve them on the spot through trial and error and sticking to the right source. Additionally, some limitations to this tool is the fact that you have to keep going back and forth between the excel sheet and the timeline website to edit and preview to make sure everything is just the way you want. Also, not being able to control the location and size of the media and text in the slide itself can occasionally result in visually unappealing slides. Overall, we enjoyed working with TimelineJS . However, there’s some features we wish it had that would make it even better. For instance, it would be nice if there were different templates so the outcome of each timeline would be individualized. Likewise, the cherry on top would be if TimelineJS offered the option of having a voiceover to guide the readers through the presentation and make them feel more engaged as if it was actually a story. Last but not least, we personally feel like if the timeline could be made into full screen, it would be more efficient because that way when using this tool for a presentation everyone could see the timeline perfectly.

All in all, we believe that TimelineJS easily allowed us to achieve the goals we have set for our research project. In fact, it’s just what we need! TimelineJS presents the perfect way for our interdisciplinary tools and results to be portrayed (unless we don’t know of other existing tools that might be able to do the same and more!). This tool allows everyone to create an attractive and well-organized timeline. It’s free of charge and user-friendly. The person can customize it for individual projects and we would definitely consider using it for our future project in different courses. We hope digital tools continue evolving to enhance our research and presentation methodologies! You can check out our TimelineJs via this link: https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=12RRVXACb3DCjja9Ur9kOh0V5FgrpZWjRid6n72GwOZ4&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=1100

If you take our recommendation and give TimelineJS a try, tell us about it in the comment section below! Until next time… Stay safe 🙂 

Written by: Dalia Bekdache, Mirriam Hijazi, Raghad Sheronick and Sara Deeb. 

Oh, the Places You’ll Go! You best believe that we went to many places using Google My Maps to gather some rather special information about Dr. Seuss’s life, work, and achievements, and we’ve written this blog to bring the places to YOU. Yes, YOU, our dear reader, and we’re back as a group just like we promised! In this blog, we’re going to share our results, thoughts, and experiences using Google My Maps as part of our research study for our project on Dr.Seuss’s children’s books and their impact on all ages alike. We recommend you grab a snack because this ride will be a long one 🙂

Before we show you our work, let’s give you a short introduction on what digital tool we’ve been recently working with: Google My Maps. Google My Maps is a system updated by Google for Google Maps. Through this system, you as a user can add specific places, markers, and directions that you can share with friends, coworkers, and colleagues, or even keep for yourself.  

So, how does this system work?

First, you need to have a Gmail account, and through it, you can create My Map. On the map page you can first name your map according to what you would like to do with it, then once you take a look at the overall page, there are three main important tools that you’ll definitely use (along with the rest of the tools of course that are super easy to use!): the search box, the ‘Add Marker’ tool, and the ‘Add Layer’ tool. Once you add a layer, you can add different locations that you might want to group together for reference, and you can choose to show or hide a layer if your map becomes too crowded with pins. You can click on the title to change the name of the layer according to your project and you can include a short description about it. By clicking on your desired location and adding a marker, you can insert a description, several photos and even videos that you would like to show. Also, you can customize the dropped pin or marker; for example, if the address is a home, you can select a Home icon. There are many more icons of different shapes that can be used and can also be numbered in the case of time sequencing of locations (such as ordering the places you’ve visited throughout your life). There are many interesting features that you can use such as drawing lines to connect locations and adding Google directions! You can even measure distances and areas if needed. 

Moving on, for our final Digital Humanities project, we chose to focus on Dr. Seuss’s children’s stories, and how they impacted both children and adults morally and culturally. We chose four books to focus on, two of which are considered as Beginner Books (The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham) and another two considered as Message Books (Oh the Places You’ll Go and The Lorax). For our mapping exercise, all books did not contain real locations that we could pinpoint through Topotext or Google My Maps, so we only focused on mapping some other interesting information about Dr. Seuss and his work, such as: 

• A time sequence of Dr. Seuss’s achievements and studies throughout his life and career: This could help us understand how his life experiences developed his achievements and led him to create the stories and cartoons that are so loved by the world.
• The main locations where Dr. Seuss lived throughout his life: These locations may allow us to understand the regions that were first exposed to his work at the time of their publications and how he became famous.
• Location of his book publications: This may also give us an idea of the areas that were first exposed to Dr. Seuss’s line of work, and to what extent his work was accepted. 
• Location of his television series broadcasts: Yet again, this may allow us to identify the level of popularity of his books and cartoons and the level of demand for his work being used in modern methods of production.
• The different languages his books have been translated to: This could show the impact his creations have had on the rest of the world, and possibly when these translations have occurred.
• And finally, the locations of Dr. Seuss’s monuments and posthumous honors in memory of his highly recognized creations.

It was quite a bit worrying at the beginning to find some research questions that could possibly yield results from Google My Maps; however, once we learned how to use the tool (which frankly only took very few minutes as it’s extremely simple to use!), and once we did some of our own digging on Dr. Seuss (mainly from Wikipedia), more ideas started flowing like the locations of book publications, posthumous honors, and tv series broadcasts.

We created 6 layers on our map, one for each of our 6 research topics, and created icons of different colors and shapes to distinguish each of the layers when they are all visible (you can choose to turn off a layer to make it easier to focus on specific layers). We even added some lengthy descriptions for our viewers to easily understand the context and some interesting visuals.

So, what results did we achieve? 

Our results were very promising! Our map turned out to be very informative and much easier to collect information from compared to reading about Dr. Seuss (technically, we had to do both, but we really appreciate the importance of such a tool because of how much it facilitates the gathered information to form a conclusion). Let’s analyze our results in the order of our 6 research questions mentioned earlier…

1. Time sequence of Dr. Seuss’s achievements and studies throughout his life and career:

It was interesting to notice Dr. Seuss’s many travels and changes throughout his life just by looking at the above screenshot of our map. We turned off all other layers to focus on each layer at a time. The four main regions of his life spiraled around Massachusetts, New York, California, and Oxford, all of which are cities that could easily help bring one into the spotlight, especially at Dr. Seuss’s time. The locations of all his work, encounters, and publications of cartoons and some of his early works all resided in those areas. If he were living in smaller rural towns instead of industrialized towns, how do you think that might have played a role in how fast he could have gained fame and recognition? These cities are KEY to his success. Not only are they busy towns filled with powerful educated people and wealthy families, but they are also the heart of the media. Dr. Seuss’s cartoons were featured in so many magazines in his early career, and his success helped him climb to higher places.

Additionally, we noticed how the locations and people impacted some of his work and life decisions. Firstly, it was his later-to-become wife, Helen Palmer, whom he met at his postgraduate university in Oxford, who convinced him not to continue his Ph.D. in English to pursue his career in drawing. This point in his life could possibly have been the most significant, which led to the ripple effect of dropping out, to creating many cartoons that became featured in several magazines, to creating advertisements, to writing books, all the way to finally reaching worldly recognition. His many travels with his wife around the world also inspired him into writing some of his children’s books. The rhythm of the ship’s engine on one cruise in Europe led him to write his very first book: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. If his poetical instincts were born at home, his artistic ideas were waiting for him just outside the house. Mulberry Street was a street in Springfield, which was the area that referred to an actual street in his hometown, and at the time it was a manufacturing hub for cars, board games, and firearms. The smokestacks, fountains, and distinct architectural features of the town, reimagined into things both strange and fantastical, could have helped to form a visual theme of books like The Lorax.  Clearly, locations do have a significant role in the production and creation of Dr. Seuss’s work throughout his life. 

2. The main locations where Dr. Seuss lived throughout his life:

We mapped out the main stable locations throughout his life and were left with generally the same pattern as was found in our above research question. These regions were what helped his creative confidence and career climb up to higher places, eventually reaching the entire world. Besides his short-lived time in the United Kingdom, his career was shaped and developed after he had dropped out of graduate school. However, his educational experiences did also have an impact, as his knowledge of his field allowed him to rather ‘think out of the box’. His national recognition and his many publications led his alma mater, Dartmouth College, to award him with a Doctorate degree, officially making him Dr. Seuss. All his work and experiences around the region led to this end result. How differently things would have been had he not listened to Helen Palmer’s advice…or if he had not met her in Oxford at all!

3. Location of his book publications:

His national recognition is clearly explained by his widespread publications through magazines and publishing companies along the paths of where he’s lived and moved around. Being featured in many readings shows how widely accepted and in demand his work was. This could probably be explained through his fun cartoons, his easy use and play on words, his use of methods and techniques that attracted children, and many more. His work was quick to be noticed, and his chance to share his work was always taken advantage of. He wrote many books and spent a lot of his time working on them, and his fame seems to have only encouraged him to work harder over the years. It is quite interesting to notice that many and most of his early works were focused on adults and not children. However, their sense of creativity led them to be fun, easy on the reader, and informative. His education combined with his passion led him to combine two very powerful tools to be used for all ages alike. 

4. Location of his television series broadcasts:

I think it’s safe to say that we all watched at least one of Dr.Seuss’ movies in our life. This got us thinking, if the books were made into movies then maybe we could map the studios that produced them? And this is exactly what we did in one of the layers, we searched for all the movies that have ever been produced and pinpointed the locations of the studios on the map. Some of the studios are actually now nonexistent, and others have either changed their names or have been bought by different companies but at the time they were: MGM Animations, DFE Films, Marvel Productions, Hanna-Barbera Productions, and Blue Sky Studios. Although most of the books were turned into animation movies, Dr. Seuss was actually very reluctant throughout most of his career to allow this because he didn’t want his characters to be marketed in contexts outside of his own books. However, as he aged, he gradually relaxed his policy and permitted the creation of several animated cartoons, which is a relief because I really can’t imagine not watching any of those animated movies! 

5. The different languages his books have been translated to:

Dr. Seuss wrote in what can be called the language of children. Hundreds of millions of copies have found their way into homes and hearts around the world. His stories were downright imaginative and told in a humorous, rhythmic style accompanied by silly drawings. But behind all the perceived silliness are important lessons and messages that kids and even adults can benefit from: Dr. Seuss wrote about loving the environment, about rejecting racism, consumerism, materialism, taking responsibility for one’s actions, and more. Dr. Seuss made a game of wordplay, inspiring and influencing a large amount of the population of the United States through his clever use of phonology and knowledge of what makes words tick – and his impact wasn’t only limited to the States, but worldwide. His books were published in at least 20 different languages! Of course, as expected, the nuances of the original text, the metaphors, made-up words, and the spirit of the story did not necessarily translate well in all these languages. Still, it was quite a feat for someone to have his works made available to children who spoke other languages. In the above picture, you can see the different mapped countries where his books were translated into their language. In his honor, March 2 is known as both “Dr.Seuss Day” and, in many places, “World Book Day.” The aim of the observance is to celebrate literature and urge children all around the world to read. There’s no doubt how impactful Dr. Seuss’s books were, which is one of the main reasons they were translated into many languages. 

6. Locations of Dr. Seuss’s monuments and posthumous honors in memory of his highly recognized creations:

Those of us who find solace in books and even anyone who has ever read a book are most likely familiar with the author Dr. Seuss. His work greatly contributed to the learning experience of many children all over the world,  and his books continue to maintain their high value and societal prestige years after his death and are still influencing the world up to this moment. In memory and honor of his literary and artwork, several places were named after him while others were built to keep his legacy alive. These places have attracted fans from all over the world. In the above picture, we mapped out the locations of these sites of attractions and found that they were mainly located around the places where he lived, and that was no surprise because the places he saw as a boy and some of the characters that he encountered had such a profound effect on him that they are later manifested in the books he created. From these monuments, the Dr. Seuss Experience is what caught our attention the most. It’s an occurring exhibition based on his books where children are able to experience and interact with the lively characters and environment. For example, visitors entering “The Lorax” room can wander through a forest of truffula trees just like in the book and at the same time, it would be teaching them about environmental stewardship. Another interesting site of attraction is the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden which features sculptures of Dr. Seuss and many of his characters from his stories. It allows you to dive into the imaginative and colorful world that Dr. Seuss wrote about. 

On another note, at Dr. Seuss’s alma mater in 2012, Dartmouth Medical School was renamed as ‘Audrey and Theodor Geisel School of Medicine’ in their honor. Geisel’s work and life were considered as a timeless example for their future physicians. Another interesting note to mention is that most first year students at the university would participate in the University’s outing club, and one tradition included staying overnight at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge where the students would have green eggs and ham for breakfast which is an inspired recipe by the beloved Dr. Seuss book!

It didn’t stop there; San Diego’s University Library was also renamed as ‘Geisel Library’ for Dr. Seuss’s kind contributions to the library and for improving literacy. These tributes have truly become iconic pieces of art and are the reflection of Dr. Seuss’s history.

“A map does not just chart, it unlocks and formulates meaning; it forms bridges between here and there, between disparate ideas that we didn’t know were previously connected.” -Reif Larsen

Google My Maps was one of the digital mapping tools that we were introduced to through our digital humanities course (ENGL 256B). It was probably the tool we were most excited to use because it was an addition to the many tools Google offers. Digital mapping is mainly concerned with producing maps that give accurate representations of a particular area with detailing major road arteries and other points of interest. It allowed us to create our own custom map which visualizes the locations of several events from Dr. Seuss’s life and this was crucial for our project due to the fact that it made it easier to navigate Dr. Seuss’s life journey. This allowed us to dive in and explore some theories as to what could have influenced his beautiful and creative writing such as his surroundings and upbringing. With Google MyMaps, we had the option of creating unlimited layers, changing the colors, adding icons and linking the different locations. Overall it was an exciting and fun experience. However, the main disadvantage of this DH tool was the fact that it is limited to novels with real-world locations, meaning that this sort of analysis wasn’t applicable to stories written by Dr. Seuss, but we managed to find other research questions to map, and we’re really satisfied with our results. 

Mapping the author’s life achievements gave us an insight into his life and his own personal development, which led him to become one of the most highly praised and recognized children’s writers. By closely reading about the author and his work, and translating these texts into visual information through MyMaps allowed us to appreciate every single detail, as well as somehow touch the world he lived in. The map we created seems almost like a virtual version of his life that we got to feel, see, and imagine through text, pictures, videos, and location. Mapping allowed us to combine the different senses of imagination and allowed us to better grasp and feel the experiences of others. Mapping reshaped our view of his work in ways where we felt like we can understand him and the reasons why he adopted certain styles in his writing and his cartoon drawings, however, this will have to be confirmed through textual analysis and a combination of both close and distant reading. Also, since most of his children’s books have special characters of their own, it’s hard to forget any of them whenever you see one. Dr. Seuss has such a unique style of drawing and cartooning that can be easily recognized as his own, and never fails to catch the attention of both adults and children with his playful and informative works. From this exercise, we can confidently say that we’re even more intrigued in his line of work, his creative confidence, and what makes his work so special to the whole world.

This is the end of our ride around all the places Dr.Seuss went. We hope you enjoyed it and landed safely back in your homes, in front of your laptops and phones. We would love it if you checked out our Google My Maps with the following button:

And if you try making your own map, please do tell us about your experiences in the comment tabs. We’ll be back soon with another blog and until then, stay safe. 🙂

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” -Dr. Seuss

Written by: Dalia Bekdache, Mirriam Hijazi, Raghad Sheronick, and Sara Deeb

Citations: 

1. “Dr. Seuss.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Mar. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss.
2. “The Wonderful World of Dr. Seuss.” The Language Journal, www.thelanguagejournal.com/2012/06/wonderful-world-of-dr-seuss.html.
3. “Dr. Seuss Bibliography.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Mar. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss_bibliography.

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Hello readers! Welcome to our second blog. Yes, OUR blog! This time, we’ve changed things up for our English 256B course at the American University of Beirut. WE are a team of 4: Dalia, Mirriam, Raghad, and Sara, and we will be posting our blogs as a team from now on! We hope you’re as excited as we are to know more about our challenges and journey within the digital humanities. 

During our Digital Humanities course, we were exposed to a variety of new and unfamiliar DH tools such as CLiC and Voyant tools and how they can be used for methods of analysis. We also learned a lot about the importance of DH and the capability it has of doing for us now, and in the future. Digital humanities have become an essential part of our learning; we apply computational commands to humanistic questions, offering a pathway to conduct research questions. In today’s blog, we’re going to be introducing to you two of our favorite digital humanities tools and explain how they contributed to our work and how they could be useful to you. CLiC and Voyant tools are data visualization tools, using these tools definitely helped associate, visualize and interpret our research questions. Keep reading to find out more about them!

CLiC Logo

The first tool we were exposed to in class was CLiC: Corpus Linguistic in Context; which is a DH tool that allows you to analyze texts through distant reading and “leads you to new insights into how readers perceive fictional characters”. This tool is extremely straightforward and easy to understand! Let’s give you a quick tour: when you first enter the website you’ll find general information about the application and a user guide for further assistance on how the tool functions. You’ll also find a link attached in order to cite anything from CLiC in your work (yes, we’ve also done that as well!). Next, if you look at the right-hand side of the page, you can see there are different tab options arranged vertically (Concordance, subset, cluster, keyword, count, and text tabs) that you can choose from to begin your analysis! 

There are five corpora in total on CliC: So far, the website includes the following: the Dickens novels,  many 19th-century reference books, Children’s Literature, African American Writers and ArTs (which are Additional requested Texts!). 

With CLiC you have several interesting features: you have the option of choosing more than one literary text (also known as corpora), limiting your search to quotes or searching for just one word in a specific text… For example,  2-gram means 2 words and choosing ChiLit as your corpora would mean you want to conduct your search through children’s literature books (which is a total of 71 books on CLiC!). Next, the Concordance and Subsets tabs both display texts (patterns) from the selected books in context. This is where you can analyze the use of particular words and phrases. The Clusters and Keywords tabs both show lists of frequent patterns (without context), but they differ in their applications. The Clusters tab lists frequent words and word sequences in a single corpus (or several corpora if you have selected more than one). In the Keywords tab, you can compare the frequency of words and clusters in one corpus with another.

Now that we’re familiar with the DH site, we decided to start off our research by selecting books from the CLiC Corpora that we were all very familiar with. We chose Children’s literature to be our Corpus, and we selected two books that we all loved as children and thought would be interesting to test out: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll! 

We were initially curious to check out the keywords available in each of the two texts (with a reference to ChiLit) to have a better understanding of what we could possibly create as research questions. This was not a very easy task at first, but once we tinkered around with the website, and once we had searched for several words through the Concordance tab as well, we thought of some ideas that could yield interesting results.  

The Concordance and Keywords tabs were the main features that we explored to build our research objectives; however, we were curious to explore the rest of the tabs such as “Counts”, where we found the counts for In Quotes, In non-Quotes, In short suspensions, Total Words, and more. We did not use the Clusters or Subsets tabs, however, we were introduced to them before completing our research exercise (and we gave you a short intro on them just a while ago!). 

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Picture from https://i.pinimg.com/originals/93/78/9e/93789ecb01d583dbdd4fa00d0223cde2.jpg

Starting with The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, we started off with searching for keywords. We noticed that most of the keywords were related to the animals and characters that were in the jungle. It got us thinking about how we could go deeper to analyzing the results. Knowing that the story was about a young boy in the jungle, we decided to search for the term “boy” through the “Concordance” tab. We realized that this term was frequently used throughout the book. 

To take our research to another level, and combining the previous two steps together, we wanted to test how frequently the term ”human” came up in the text. We were surprised to notice that it only came up three times throughout the story. At that point, we had to participate in close reading by reading the sentences to take a closer look at the context where the terms “human” and “boy” appeared. We came to the conclusion that because the boy lived and grew up with the animals of the jungle, he was not considered human relative to the jungle kingdom. 

We can also back our conclusion using the below results found from the keywords tab, which mainly shows a list of animals and names, along with Mowgli, which is the boy’s name.

 

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We found our analysis to be a very interesting one and continued testing on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. 

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https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/1_J2jUx2eMZugYbf_WgcKGVgDogV13TopRMuJBgjSMm3g7b2DwiVebHT9Tfj2Yd9Udgn-w=s126

When thinking about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, the white rabbit is one of the first things that comes to mind. So we decided to search for the term “rabbit” through the Concordance tab and realized that it was frequently used.

We figured that was the case because he was obviously one of the main characters in the book. In fact, the white rabbit was what led Alice down the rabbit hole in the first place (this is actually because the rabbit symbolizes the spark of curiosity in Alice at the beginning of the story!), and he was always checking his pocket watch and rushing to be somewhere as if he was late to something! This further got us thinking of the term “time”.

When the results came to show that the word ‘time’ was so frequently used throughout the text and not just when talking about the rabbit, we realized how important the concept of time was in this book. This got us thinking after further investigation, (and possibly a bit of prior knowledge and some close reading…) that in some parts of the story the rabbit actually symbolizes time (MIND=BLOWN) and that Alice was never able to catch up to the rabbit (so she basically couldn’t catch up to time), whereas in other parts of the story ‘Time’ was a character that could be manipulated (they could change time as they pleased since it was Wonderland). This made us realize that there is so much more meaning behind a simple children’s book!

Next, we decided to search the same terms (‘time’ and ‘rabbit’) in the sequel of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass. Results showed that ‘rabbit’ wasn’t found in the text through the Concordance tab on CLiC, but ‘time’ was more abundant compared to the first book. At this point, we were unable to analyze what our results meant, and had to resort to old-fashioned reading of some phrases to understand what was going on.  Once we gained some extra knowledge about the storyline by investigating some of the results from the Concordance, we attempted to compare both books and realized that there might be some sort of connection as to why the ‘rabbit’ isn’t found in the second book. As we mentioned above, the rabbit was always in a rush in Alice in Wonderland whereas in Through the Looking Glass he disappeared but time was more abundant (through our analysis on CLiC). Additionally, we thought that maybe the rabbit caught up to time? Therefore we inferred that the concept of  time in the book could possibly play a larger role. Combining both our close and distant reading results, we concluded that the first book revolves around the concept of Alice always trying to catch up to time whereas the second book revolves around Alice manipulating time. 

To up our game, we then decided to compare The Jungle Book to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland! In order to choose our research questions, we decided to refer to Google, our best friend, to read summaries on both books to refresh our memory and possibly shape some ideas we would like to explore. We chose to focus on some common attributes of both books. Knowing that Mowgli was a young boy who lost his parents, and Alice was lost in her own imagination, we chose to investigate to what extent these protagonists were lost, and how “lost” was used throughout the texts. We searched for the term “lost” using the Concordance tab, and noticed that the term was found more frequently in The Jungle Book. To grasp a deeper understanding, we decided to focus on the emotions of the protagonists as they go through their adventures. Terms such as “wonder” and “curious” were also searched through the “Concordance” tab, and results showed that they were only found in Alice’s Adventures. Looking closer at the sentences, we came to the conclusion that Alice was more inclined to involving herself in unknown situations.

Throughout all our above tests using CLiC, we were forced to alternate between distant reading, via simply checking the results shown, and close reading, via reading the sentences and understanding the context where the words appeared. Our most significant results could not have been made without the contribution to both types of reading. Without distant reading, we wouldn’t have been able to attain such information at such short notice, and without close reading, our results would have been meaningless. Both are just as important to utilize when using the CLiC tool. We believe that our analysis of the comparison between the two books was the most interesting amongst our research trials. 

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Voyant Tools Logo

Now that we’re done from CLiC, we can focus on Voyant Tools, which is what caught our attention more! It is a free online textual analysis site for digital text and is very easy to use. Voyant Tools is to some degree similar to a scanner, thus to use it effectively we have to start with a research question. For instance, “For what reason did the author incorporate such a large number of negative feelings?” The question will lead us to different inquiries by which we can utilize the tools for our potential benefit to analyze more. Voyant accepts texts in a number of ways, either by copy-and-paste of URLs or uploading files from your computer. You also have the choice of uploading multiple files as a corpus or using one of Voyant’s built-in test corpora which are only two (Shakespeare’s Plays or Austen’s Novels).  After that, you’ll be presented with five primary tools: Cirrus, Reader, Trends, Summary, and Contexts.

In order to perform our analysis, we chose the three following Lewis Carroll nonsense fictional novels. We included in the corpus Through the Looking Glass, Sylvie and Bruno, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 

We found these texts from Gutenberg.org and saved each one as a plain text (the year it was published then name of text) and uploaded it.  We were curious to explore all the features Voyant had offered, and Cirrus was definitely the first thing that caught our attention because it was the nicest to look at *mesmerized*.  

Lewis Carroll was best known for his imaginative writings for children and his work had become the most popular children’s book during his time. His books were also a great exploration of language and were famous for his writing style of lyrical nonsense in his works. As a group, we were interested in researching and learning more about his language in his books. Considering the fact that Lewis Carrol’s main audience was children, we wanted to test out if it really was the case, since his sophisticated language and ideas within the text could also be enjoyed by adults. We first thought about the term children (since we noticed this term was found in the Cirrus) and this got us thinking that the frequency of the presence of this term could possibly determine if Lewis was really addressing children or not. Our question as to how frequently the word children was answered using the Cirrus option on Voyant Tools, which is a word cloud that displays the frequency of words-the larger the word, the more frequently it occurs. We were also able to manage the list of words that Cirrus excludes (such as ‘the’, ‘is’… etc.) by clicking on ‘Define Options’ then edit the list on stopword and type the word(s) you’d like to exclude.   

The Cirrus was our starting point to highlight the presence of the term “Children”

Frequency of the term “Child”  (197) and “Children” (103) in the texts of Lewis Carroll

Moving on, since the most occurring word was Alice (obviously since she was the main character),  we decided to further look into context to see the overall tone of the text. Given that it’s a children’s book, one would expect it to have a playful tone. Something we stumbled upon was that the word Alice was always incorporated in context with the animals she interacted with. As we previously discussed during our CLiC analysis, the word ‘Rabbit’ occurred frequently.  Other words like ‘Mouse’, ‘caterpillar’, and ‘Gryphon’ were also found on the list of most occurring words. Alice’s interaction and conversations with animals further demonstrates a playful and positive tone. Also, using animals in books is expected in children’s literature since it helps spark their imagination, provide information and even teach moral lessons. Voyant Tools helped us spot patterns and draw attention to trends previously hidden in texts and the list of most used words and their context aided in finding out the attitude of the book without actually reading it (this is termed distant reading!). In this case, distant reading was more beneficial than close reading. 

Another thing we found interesting and worth bringing up was the fifth chapter of Alice in Wonderland, ‘Advice from a Caterpillar’, where Alice is introduced to a wise insect. Alice’s adventures express the importance of imagination and adventure throughout childhood, and the story acts as a progression of how children grow into adults both physically and emotionally. Lewis Carroll builds this image of Victorian England through the language he uses throughout the novel, and it is particularly evident in the conversation between Alice and the Caterpillar.  The word “Caterpillar” occurs 25 times whereas “Alice” occurs 27 times.

Upon analyzing the word trend graph, it illustrates the exchange in conversation regarding the advice the caterpillar is instilling upon Alice. 

The word “Caterpillar” suggests a theme of evolution or transformation.Words such as “youth”, “minute”, “life”, “youth”, “old”, and “beginning” suggest a theme of a self-journey to find one’s self. Words like “inches”, “mushroom”, “height”, “little”, “grow”, and “size” illustrate the caterpillar’s instructions for Alice to eat in certain ways to grow or shrink in any given situation.

On another note, Voyant tools allowed us to study the different emotions present in the three texts, as well as their frequencies. We noticed that sadness associated with crying was far more present than moments of happiness and laughter felt by the characters of the book throughout the story.

Analysis of the emotions in Alice in Wonderland

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Both Voyant and CLiC must yield similar results, but their slight differences in the sites and their tools may bring different results into light. Once we uploaded Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass onto Voyant, we realized that we could easily confirm some of our analysis through easy graphical and visual representations. We searched ‘time’ and ‘rabbit’ again and focused on the graphical trend results.

Looking at the bigger picture for all the texts we analyzed, what caught our attention through cirrus and keywords was the use of animals. Animals have held an important place in written literature for hundreds of years. Starting from the mid 1800’s and early 1900’s, the late Victorian Period is often referred to as the golden age of children’s literature. This is when we realized we wanted to investigate further the use of animals in children’s literature and their role and how they differ from one another. We decided to dive deeper by researching the significance of anthropomorphism (giving animals human characteristics)  and how it affects children since this is an effective method used by authors to submerge children in the story and provide characters with more effective communication abilities.  In order to test this research question we added The Jungle Book to the previous texts by Lewis Carroll. 

According to some online articles the use of animals as characters in children’s books, is more appealing than human characters and is sometimes easier for a child to grasp an idea or concept. We found a scholarly article that claims that animals such as dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, rabbits, ducks, and bears are very familiar in children’s literature. We decided to further investigate if these animals are also common in the stories we chose and the results from Voyant easily showed that some are in fact present in these books. We chose Voyant to conduct this analysis to easily visualize the trends without looking at the whole text.

Our analysis does not stop here however, since we would like to know what roles they play and how they can affect children. So we started brainstorming simple concepts that could be connected to moral lessons such as: good, bad, evil, hero, creativity, art, fun,  imagination, feelings and many more… 

Animals are considered the perfect medium for conveying tangible and intangible concepts in an entertaining way. In Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland the animals were there to teach her moral lessons whereas in The Jungle Book the animals represented the good and the bad (Baloo the bear was good, whereas Shere Khan the tiger represented evil). 

As beginners into the world of digital humanities, both CliC and Voyant are definitely user- friendly web-based tools that help dissect and understand texts. What’s interesting is that there are so many more features that we can benefit from to gather extra information that we might not have thought about once we originally thought of our research questions. For example, the ‘vocabulary density’ in Voyant Tools can tell us a lot about the book or text as well. Vocabulary density is a quantitative value that indicates the level of difficulty of the text; the lower the density, the more complex the text (and the more likely it has unique words), while a higher density indicates a simpler text with more commonly used words. Such features bring new ideas to the table and widen the scope of research. There are lots of more features that we have not utilized on both CLiC and Voyant Tools, and it takes a bit of investigation and sometimes relevance (or importance) to know what else we could find hidden within these tools. 

Although they may have multiple features, after the first introductory session in class on how to use these tools, we directly got the hang of them as they’re both quite simple! They are educational online trusted institutes that provide quick easy access to results in seconds. They are both remarkably powerful as they can handle large amounts of texts with considerable speed and ease.

What’s special about both tools is you can easily order texts by date of publication and view word trends. Data provided in both tools are quantitative; we can find word frequencies that cannot be easily done by us humans. Such tools can and should be used as supplements to close reading, and not as their replacement. For example, they can provide quantitative confirmation of patterns that you notice in a text and allow you to locate specific words or phrases within a large corpus to make your own larger analysis. Thus, these tools only provide extra information that you may not necessarily be able to extract easily. Additionally, it’s great that you can easily compare two on both CLiC and Voyant Tools, which makes analysis between stories interesting.

An interesting feature that Voyant Tools possesses compared to CLiC is that data is presented through visual representation which is more attractive and easier to read and understand, thereby facilitating their retelling. It can help you spot patterns, uncover and draw your attention to trends previously hidden in texts, and cause you to make new inquiries. As a result, some people may prefer to use Voyant Tools instead, but then again this is a personal preference and may also depend on what you may be looking for. 

Despite the advantages these tools possess, there are unfortunately a few limitations to both such as their inability to do the complete analysis for you, and so close reading must be done to some certain degree, For example, the tools cannot understand irony and sarcasm, and these descriptions must sadly be deterred by us humans. It would be pretty amazing if they could though! On the bright side, at least these tools give you starting points through distant reading to analyze things that could lead you to something bigger. The computer surely offers readers multi-directional lenses to the texts compared to if you were to analyze on your own through close reading, which would be much more difficult. 

Through our practice in class and our own research using these tools, we have become very familiar with them. Surely, we will be using them again especially for our final project. This is the end for now, but not for long… We’re coming back for you soon with another blog and yes as a team 🙂

In the meantime, how about you try the DH tools yourselves? Check out CLiC using the following link: clic.bham.ac.uk. You can also tinker around with the Voyant DH tool using the following link: https://voyant-tools.org/. We’d love to hear about your experiences, so send us messages using the below comment tabs! Cheers!

Written By: Dalia Bekdache, Mirriam Hijazi, Sara Deeb, and Raghad Sheronick

Citations: 

1. Mahlberg, M., Stockwell, P., de Joode, J., Smith, C., & O’Donnell, M. B. (2016). CLiC Dickens: Novel uses of concordances for the integration of corpus stylistics and cognitive poetics. Corpora, 11(3), 433–463.
2. Azmiry, N. (2014, December 28). Animals and Their Functions in Children’s Literature Since 1900. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/11220842/Animals_and_Their_Functions_in_Childrens_Literature_Since_1900

https://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/07/who-owns-the-digital-map-of-the-world-laura-bliss-citylab

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Hello Dear Visitors! Welcome to my first Blog! I’d like to share with you my journey and encounters with the digital world and technologies, and their vital roles and importance in my life!

As a 90’s child, the digital world developed exponentially as I grew older, and I believe that our generation is lucky to see its growth, great impact, and use in all fields. We cannot deny that digital technology has definitely kept us entertained throughout our lives and easily connected us with the rest of the world and people with the blink of an eye! I believe that digital technology plays an important role and has a net positive impact on my life as a person and as a university student.

As I was brainstorming this blog, my mind was all over the place as I couldn’t really pinpoint where I should begin, so let me just start from the absolute beginning: when I got my first very own mobile phone at the age of 8 years old! (Yes, I know, I was quite young!)

For as far as I can remember, my first Samsung flip phone was my first own digital technology. I still remember the day my Mom and Dad bought their first mobile phones. I was amazed to see such a small and mobile technology. I used to play and tinker a lot with their phones as I was extremely curious. Soon enough, I got my own. As I was really young, all I really used and needed were the phone games that came with the mobile, the phone camera to get creative and take pictures, and some music (I even recall my dad somehow installing a Harry Potter Ringtone for me to use!). Soon enough technology developed- I got an iPhone 3Gs, and I was mainly invested in games, music, and photography such as PSP, Wii, PS3, Nintendo, iPod Nano, and Sony Camera.

I have to admit that being exposed to such technology at a young age allowed me to adapt faster to new technology arising nowadays, and also to develop my mental abilities. The more I played games, the more attentive I became, and the faster my response was. However I cannot deny that I was somewhat addicted to playing games for a while, and I would do nothing but play. On the other hand, I also learnt how to take proper pictures with time, practice, and even guidance with the help of my dad. Additionally, getting used to setting up a device or digital platform became a norm nowadays. I’m pretty sure that I came across many obstacles in learning how to utilize the technology as a child, especially since I would only utilize the service and not exactly understand how it works, but this changed with time.

Fast forward to when I was around 13 years old when I got my first laptop as my time became more invested in new digital tools besides just games and music: I was already familiar with Google, Youtube, Facebook, Msn, and E-mail for online social communication and started using Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel more for school projects and research. We were also introduced to many basic software and search engines in school to become familiar with the digital world. I originally started using these digital platforms for leisure, but I later realized their importance in my everyday life, and how easy it is with one click of a button to answer any question that crossed my mind.

As I grew older, I became more experienced with the digital technologies and I believe that these experiences shaped my understanding. The more I utilized and became familiar with the technology, the more I felt that my usage matured. Additionally, my relationship with these technologies changed with time once I found my preferences and purpose. Digital technology is so much more than just for entertainment. I became extremely dependent on the World Wide Web, where I can easily access any information that I require in seconds.

Nowadays, social media has become a huge and vital part of my life. I constantly use Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp. However, I am somewhat stagnant on my Facebook and Twitter accounts. I would prefer to just surf the applications for updates and interesting information, but I do not generally post anything of my own, except instagram from time to time. When I was younger, I shared several of my thoughts and pictures, but nowadays I do not feel the need to. However, for my Digital Humanities course that I am taking at my university, I will become more present in the Twitter world as I am required to post at least 3-4 times per week. I’m excited to become more active and join the online community to engage in interesting topics and debates.

Although I am not personally very active on social media, I’ve learnt a lot of beneficial tips and tricks about the platforms and their use. I am currently managing social media accounts for several societies in my University, and I must constantly post updates, facts, teasers, and more to make the public aware of our work and objectives. Social media is an extremely powerful tool to spread a message or awareness about a new concept or society that deserves recognition. It also allows everyone to stay in touch with the latest news and events all over the world, and brings people together from different cultures and countries for support and praise.

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With time, my usage of my laptop and digital devices became mainly focused around my undergraduate education and my main interests: I have been using social media a lot less to communicate with people and more to keep tabs on specific organizations and sometimes people that are of interest to me such as NASA, SpaceX, Tesla…etc., Microsoft Office Applications, and engineering software for my major. During my free time, I would rather read an enlightening article about my passion for engineering, or about the world news, or anything that might interest me that would further enrich me with knowledge. I generally spend around 2-4 hours per day on social media platforms. However, I cannot deny that nowadays I am ALWAYS on my phone, and I cannot go anywhere without it, and same goes with my laptop.

Going back to the idea where I have become extremely dependent on digital platforms, most of my current studies throughout my engineering major would not have been possible without the use of the internet. It was very enlightening to learn how to easily access scholarly published articles on any topic through many search engines such as Google Scholar, and that I can easily access multiple online libraries for any field that interests me through my university’s website. I also learnt how to easily add organized references to any paper that I write through programs like EndNote and many other similar ones. Nowadays, you can find a program or software to do anything, and they are just a search button away! Before I think twice about anything, I can easily search any idea that pops into my head on Google and YouTube, and within 10-15 minutes, I would have learnt something new.

With the blink of an eye, more and more digital platforms are arising, whether for social communication or for educational and research purposes. It’s amazing to see how everything nowadays is becoming digitized for all to see and use. I believe digital technology is an extremely valuable asset when used wisely.

I have always wanted to make my own website, but truth be told I never really bothered to search how to make one. Because of my Digital Humanities course, I now know how simple and easy it is to make my own website, and I’m sure it would come in handy for my future work! I’m really excited to go through this journey, and I hope you’ll enjoy my blogs as much as I’ll enjoy writing for everyone to see how my work would develop. I’m also very interested to learn the true meaning behind Digital Humanities and to become familiar with the tools available to use and how they can create an impact on our lives.

Cheers, and stay posted for more!