In the digital age sources continue to be digitized in large volumes making them more accessible but also more abundant. Historians doing research in the digital age, as a result, are often faced with daunting amount of material. In response, scholars have posited that data mining techniques can help us to make sense of the abundance of digital material, can present a more methodologically unbiased and open approach to these dauntingly deep archives, and can identify trends, connections, and themes that the human mind may not be able to grasp across such a wide array of material.

This skill asks you to attempt to use both distant and close reading to analyze volumes of text about the role of women in the Progressive Era. In class we discussed Flannagan’s article and the ways in which women attempted to remake the city in their image and expanded the notion of what it meant to act “politically.” Using Flannagan’s article as context and the datasets provided below, analyze the texts from both a distant and close reading approach.

You should download and then upload to Voyant Tools one of the two datasets below. Using the various approaches and tools offered by Voyant, explore the trends within the document. Zoom in on particular words, look for relationships, and ask questions about what you find. What is surprising? What makes sense and confirms what you know about the period from our reading and class discussions? You may wish to go back to the documents themselves and read segments to understand what exactly is being picked up by Voyant. What is the context in which the themes you identify are discussed in the documents themselves? In other words, balance distant reading (through Voyant) with close reading (the individual documents themselves). Pick at least two views from Voyant Tools to use as examples in your blog post and screenshot them.

Finally, write a blog post that discusses what you learned about text analysis and the role of women in remaking the city in the Progressive Era. Include at least 2 screenshots of of visualizations from Voyant and be sure to frame what you find in the context of the historical reading that you have done for this class. What can we learn about women’s approach to reform in the Progressive Era by analyzing these texts through text analysis software? You might consider what elements of Flanagan’s article you see in the corpus and what themes or trend might garner further analysis. Include specific examples in your blog post.

Data:

• Text files (for distant reading via Voyant Tools):
  • The American City, issues from 1915
  • The Woman Citizen, issues from 1918
• Pdf files (for close reading):
  • The American City, issues from 1915
  • The Woman Citizen, issues from 1918

Due before the start of class on April 25th