Specialized trainings

Letters and figures: the computational analysis of language at the service of the study of texts

Valid as part of the DENS: 6 ECTS (Semester 2). Teaching also registered in the Literature and Language department.

Whether they are dedicated to simple tasks, such as identifying lexicon, syntactic phenomena, particular rhythms, or whether they venture to identify the major themes of a text, the stylistic idiosyncrasies of an author, or the narrative structures of a work, so-called “automatic language processing” tools are playing an increasingly important role in contemporary literary studies. What are the main contributions obtained by these computational approaches? When should we integrate (or not!) these methods into our work? How to use it? It is to answer these questions that this course will tackle, by exploring in a theoretical and practical way the possibilities offered by these tools, their results, and their limits.

Prerequisites: The course does not presuppose any mathematical or computer knowledge.

Validation methods: attendance and mini-thesis implementing one or more of the tools covered during the semester

Academic Leader: Florian Cafiero: florian.cafiero@columbia.edu

Introduction to natural language processing

The course provides an overview of automatic language processing techniques applied (and applicable) to digital humanities issues.

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IHMC Quantitative Workshop

This workshop aims to accompany students, doctoral students and researchers in the use of quantitative techniques in history. At the same time, it will also discuss the debates related to these uses.

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Walking Ethnography and Digital Tools

The course provides intellectual and digital tools for editing ethnographic survey materials, and learning about data management and modeling using ArchEthno software.

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Archives of research in progress

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Urban Machines

An introduction to digital mapping as a rendering format. Students are asked to annotate (in real time if they can with their smartphone) a free digital map (mymaps) with texts, quotes, references, photos or drawings.

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La Souterraine Workshop

This workshop offers 12 students from ENS and EHESS the opportunity to carry out a transdisciplinary fieldwork survey combining ethnography, photography and geography during an intensive week. At the end of the course, the students are familiarized with computerized data entry of different kinds.

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