Making Democracy Work in Africa

Computer Simulation Models for Research, Residential, and Online Teaching

Simulations can empower students by providing hands-on engagement with concepts that are otherwise abstract or theoretical. Researchers and policy-makers can use simulations to understand how models play out under a variety of starting conditions. Evan Lieberman, Professor of Political Science, and DH will work together to build simulations and games arounds topics affecting democratic development in Africa, which will be paired with Professor Lieberman’s popular online course 17.571x “Democratic Development in Africa”.

• Spring 2020
• Faculty/Student Collaboration

Tobacco Networks

Highlighting Network Connections Among Major Tobacco Companies and Researchers

How do you sift through several decades-worth of documents from the Tobacco industry to paint a cohesive picture of how its major players have deceived and misled the public about the dangers of smoking?

Led by MIT postdoctoral associate Stephan Risi, the Tobacco Networks project’s goal was to produce a general network visualization of roughly 1.4 million documents of data related to Tobacco researchers, lawyers, and marketing experts in a way that visually elucidates the connections between significant people and corporations in the industry. The anticipated scope of the Tobacco Networks project is to provide a resource for those studying the strategies employed by tobacco companies throughout history to persuade consumers and mask the addictive effects of the drug.

The Reading Redux

Exploring the Value of Rereading

If we can simulate the experience of rereading a specific text, what useful information can we gather about how readers rethink, clarify, and nuance their thoughts about or their interpretations of that text? Associate Professor of Literature, Sandy Alexandre, and the DH Lab will collaborate on this project to investigate these and other questions around close reading and rereading texts, using computational tools to gather and analyze the data.

• Fall 2019
• Faculty/Student Collaboration

Computation History

History of Computing at MIT, 1950–1962

MIT recently announced the creation of the Schwarzman College of Computing to begin in 2019, affording the perfect opportunity as humanists to reflect on the history of computation at the Institute in the past. The project mixes archival work in the Institute's Archives and Special Collections with coding skills (including old computer simulation) to create a digital repository of information about how computing was integrated into the history of MIT. By not just focusing on principal figures such as Philip Morse but also the people who maintained the computers and facilitated their use, the Computation History project aims to give a deep and balanced insight into how computation has transformed the Institute, the humanities, and the world.

• November 2018 - June 2019
• Project
• Student Project (UROP)
• Open Source: Code on GitHub
• Project website: https://comphist.digitalhumanitiesmit.org/

Gender / Novels

Computational Reading of Gender in Novels, 1770–1922

The first project of the MIT Digital Humanities Lab analyzed the description of gender and gender roles across a large repertory of novels in the English language, primarily from the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Our goal was to build computational tools that helped us understand how conceptions of gender were expressed and changed through distant reading of thousands of books. Our database involves over 4200 novels sourced from the Gutenberg project and gives us a comprehensive look at the views of authors of the time period.

• September - November 2018
• Student Project (UROP)
• Open Source: Code on GitHub
• Project website: http://gendernovels.digitalhumanitiesmit.org/

Faculty Research

Projects for advancing Faculty and Staff Research and Pedagogy

In October of each year, the Projects in Digital Humanities at MIT invite Faculty and Teaching Staff of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences to propose projects in research and teaching to conduct in the lab the following year. Projects are chosen for student learning opportunities, feasibility, and faculty commitment. Once selected, faculty spend part time for a semester in the lab as a substitute for one class of teaching (the DH programs compensate department and section heads for replacement teaching). Faculty in the lab work closely with undergraduate students, postdocs, and technical professionals to create projects related to their research and teaching. Faculty and students learn to speak each others' language, students learn the joys and difficulties of faculty research interests, and, by communicating at each stage of the research and development, avoid the pitfalls that plague so many DH projects.