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Racial Critique, Data Science, and Literary Studies

Photo of Richard Jean So
Thursday, April 07, 2022
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Richard So

This talk explores the affordances of new methods in data science, such as machine learning, for the analysis of literature and culture. It will argue that a critical and reflexive use of such methods can facilitate new discoveries for literary studies, and that the two paired together can represent an important new form of cultural analysis, particularly for the study of race and literature. The talk is anchored by a case study that explores the post-war US novel, especially Black and Asian American fiction in a comparative racial context.

Richard Jean So is an associate professor of English and cultural analytics at McGill University. He works at the intersection of cultural analysis and data science, using data-driven methods to study culture, both historical and contemporary, from the novel to Netflix to social media and writing platforms like Reddit and AO3. He is the author of Transpacific Community (Columbia University Press, 2016) and Redlining Culture: A Data History of Racial Inequality and Postwar Fiction (Columbia University Press, 2020), a data-driven study of white supremacy in post-war U.S. publishing and literature. Currently, he is working on a new book that studies the impact of social media and user generated content on how we talk about race and tell stories about race, which combines cultural criticism and data science. His work has also been featured in Critical Inquiry, PMLA, boundary 2, Representations, Modern Language Quarterly, American Literary History, American Literature, and Journal of Cultural Analytics.

Contact: Lisa Olds