Literature, Data, and Interpretation

How and why has literary criticism relied on or resisted quantitative methods? In this seminar we survey current debates about evidence, Digital Humanities and cultural analytics and discuss methods of evaluating data as evidence across disciplines. Using approaches from data feminism, critical archival studies, and Data for Black Lives, we think about traditional objects of literary study: the book, the text, the poem, the artwork, as data with a complicated past and future. How might humanities and data together build more equitable ways of knowing?