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Visualizing the New Woman

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Thursday, September 25, 2014
4:15 pm - 5:30 pm
Hannah Jacobs
Media Arts + Sciences Rendezvous

'"The woman¿s movement of this age is the most momentous event that has ever disturbed the sleep of the conservative,¿¿ a London newspaper The Woman¿s Herald quotes of a Mr. Ham speaking at the 1893 Chicago World¿s Fair, ¿¿Without warning woman suddenly appears on the scene of man¿s activities, as a sort of new creation, and demands a share in the struggles, the responsibilities, and the honours of the world¿¿. This ¿New Woman¿ was a contested term that developed out of debates over changing roles of women in British and American societies in the 1890s. The New Woman¿s rise to prominence can be attributed to fiction and drama, and to newspaper articles and other periodical texts. Examination and comparison of these writings using digital methods reveals not only the term¿s multiplicity of meanings but also the discursive network that can be traced through its various interpretations in such writings. Part of a thesis submitted for a Master of Arts in Digital Humanities, the project investigates through text analysis and interactive information visualization definitions of the New Woman and the New Woman discursive network as represented in a collection of over 50 texts published in the United States and British Empire in 1893-1894. The project's purpose is both to highlight the intricacies of the New Woman discourse and to explore digital techniques, with a focus on visualization, that can be used to present macro- and microanalyses of corpora.

Contact: Eric Monson