Digital Humanities

Hello friends, what do you think about digital humanities ? Well I thought it was related to human beings and their morality. But it was not so. This digital humanities have nothing to do with morality. So now you have an idea of what I'm going to discuss today. Before jump to the other things I would like to clear the concept of what digital humanities is ? So let's see.

•What is Digital Humanities ? 

According to Wikipedia source,

Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the analysis of their application. 

The digital humanities, also known as humanities computing, is a field of study, research, teaching, and invention concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities. It is methodological by nature and interdisciplinary in scope. It involves investigation, analysis, synthesis and presentation of information in electronic form. It studies how these media affect the disciplines in which they are used, and what these disciplines have to contribute to our knowledge of computing. 

So DH connected with art, science, sociology, history and many other subjects. It is the computational or we can say computing system of study. 

•What is the need of Digital Humanities ? 

The question that comes to our mind is, after all What is the importance and need of digital humanities ? So the digital humanities teaches us how to become Real Human being. That humanities sees that people will not become a Robot. 

Digital humanities have a connection with the English departments. These are the reasons given by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum to explain what DH is doing in English Departments. 

• We see the simultaneous explosion of interest in e-reading and e-book devices like the Kindle, iPad, and Nook and the advent of large-scale text digitization projects, the most significant of course being Google Books.

• The openness of English departments to cultural studies, where computers and other objects of digital material culture become the centerpiece of analysis. 

• A modest but much-promoted belle-lettristic project around hypertext and other forms of electronic literature that continues to this day and is increasingly vibrant and diverse.

• The widespread means to implement electronic archives.

• After numeric input, text has been by far the most tractable datatype for computers to manipulate. Unlike images, audio, video, and so on, there is a long tradition of text-based data processing that was within the capabilities of even some of the earliest computer systems and that has for decades fed research in fields like stylistics, linguistics, and author attribution studies, all heavily associated with English departments.

• There is the long association between computers and composition, almost as long and just as rich in its lineage.

This is very true, because we as students of the English department use various digital tools. 

Examples :-

Let's understand it through the example. 

The first example I want to give is my own. We have celebrated Virtual Teacher's Day.  For Virtual Teacher's Day I have prepared an auto generated certificate for participants. This was an example of digital humanities. We are using digital tools everyday. So these all are digital humanities. We can get any information through the use of digital tools. Even we analyse all the data with a different perspective also.

Here are also given very interesting questions to discuss in the course. One of them I want to share with you is,

This course also gives questions to think what we have understood after watchi video. The screenshot I have shared is very important question about digital humanities. These digital tools became a part of our everyday life.

Now I would like to discuss CLiC activity. This is a very interesting activity for digital humanities. The full form of CLiC is Corpus Linguistics in Context. It was also a useful Activity to read the data. 

This CLiC activity gives us every little information also. Let's understand it through some examples :-

In this activity we have to look at the noun chin. We can find different ways in which the noun is used to describe fictional characters. To begin with, we can check how frequently chins appear in Dickens compared with other authors, or compared with general usage. You can also try !

Activity 9.1 Looking for chins in Dickens :-

1. Go to the CLiC Concordance tab (http://clic.bham.ac.uk/concodance). 

2. Select DNov – Dickens’s Novels in the “Search the Corpora” box. DNov is a corpus of all of Dickens’s novels. 

3. In “Only in subsets”, make sure “All text” is selected. and select the subset “All text”. 

4. In ‘Search for terms”, enter chin. Hit Return. 

Here is what I got -

This will give you a set of concordance lines in which chin appears across Dickens’s works. 

Let's try another activity.  For the creation of fictional worlds, the setting and atmosphere play an important role. While each novel creates its own particular world, it is still possible to identify similarities across novels and we can interpret accounts of settings against the social and historical context of the time. Charles Dickens is often referred to as an author who was concerned with living and working conditions in the city, Jane Austen, in contrast often shows us social life away from the city. A starting point to compare the type of fictional worlds that these two authors write about is a ‘key comparison’. 

Activity 10.1 Keywords comparing Austen and Dickens :- 

1. Go to the keywords tab either directly here (http://clic.bham.ac.uk/concordance) or by selecting the “Keywords” box on the right side of CLiC. 

2. Select all of Austen’s novels as “Target corpora” (you will have to enter each one separately from the scroll-down list; if you start typing “Aus” into the Target box, then Austen’s novels will be collected at the top, which will save a bit of time). And select all Dickens’s novels as “Reference corpora” (easily done by selecting “DNov”). 

3. Select “All text” from the option box “...within subset” and keep the default settings (which will give you words as 1-gram, and so on), as follows. 

4. This will give you a list of keywords for Austen (in comparison with Dickens) down the left hand side, ordered by their degree of difference from the Dickens corpus. 

5. To find the keywords in Dickens, compared with Austen, simply reverse the choices you entered in the “Target” and “Reference corpora”. 

6. Compare the two keyword lists and try to find words that seem relevant to setting and atmosphere.

And here is what I have received :- 

So in this activity we come to know about the words and it's frequency. How many times they have been used. We also compare them with other works also. 

So all the data gives us very little information which is useful to analyse any text. The other important benefit of this activity is we get any information second with the use of digital humanities. Traditional humanities are very time consuming. But digital humanities take only a few seconds to find the data. 

Thinking Activity on Dino Daan

 Hello friends. I'm Latta Baraiya and today in this blog I'm going to discuss one famous poem "Dino Daan" by Rabindranath Tagore. Before beginning the discussion I would like to throw some light on the poet. 

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath – poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Before jumping on the questions and answers let's have look at the poem :-

Said the royal attendant, “Despite entreaties, king,

The finest hermit, best among men, refuses shelter

In your temple of gold, he is singing to god

Beneath a tree by the road. The devout surround him

In numbers large, their overflowing tears of joy

Rinse the dust off the earth. The temple, though,

Is all but deserted; just as bees abandon

The gilded honeypot when maddened by the fragrance

Of the flower to swiftly spread their wings

And fly to the petals unfurling in the bush

To quench their eager thirst, so too are people,

Sparing not a glance for the palace of gold,

Thronging to where a flower in a devout heart

Spreads heaven’s incense. On the bejewelled platform

The god sits alone in the empty temple.”

At this,

The fretful king dismounted from his throne to go

Where the hermit sat beneath the tree. Bowing, he said,

“My lord, why have you forsaken god’s mighty abode,

The royal construction of gold that pierces the sky,

To sing paeans to the divine here on the streets?’

“There is no god in that temple,” said the hermit.

Furious,

The king said, “No god! You speak like a godless man,

Hermit. A bejewelled idol on a bejewelled throne,

You say it’s empty?”

“Not empty, it holds royal arrogance,

You have consecrated yourself, not the god of the world.”

Frowning, said the king, “You say the temple I made

With twenty lakh gold coins, reaching to the sky,

That I dedicated to the deity after due rituals,

This impeccable edifice – it has no room for god!”

Said the tranquil hermit, “The year when the fires

Raged and rendered twenty thousand subjects

Homeless, destitute; when they came to your door

With futile pleas for help, and sheltered in the woods,

In caves, in the shade of trees, in dilapidated temples,

When you constructed your gold-encrusted building

With twenty lakh gold coins for a deity, god said,

‘My eternal home is lit with countless lamps

In the blue, infinite sky; its everlasting foundations

Are truth, peace, compassion, love. This feeble miser

Who could not give homes to his homeless subjects

Expects to give me one!’ At that moment god left

To join the poor in their shelter beneath the trees.

As hollow as the froth and foam in the deep wide ocean

Is your temple, just as bereft beneath the universe,

A bubble of gold and pride.”

Flaring up in rage

The king said, “You false deceiver, leave my kingdom

This instant.”

Serenely the hermit said to him,

“You have exiled the one who loves the devout.

Now send the devout into the same exile, king.” 

1) The poem is written before 120 years (approx.). Can you find any resemblance between the poem and the pandemic time? 

Yes, I find that the poem is relevant to pandemic time also. In the corona pandemic thousands of people died and there was no space in hospitals. Countries like India have lakhs of people who believe in God except rather than humanity.  During the corona pandemic we see that everything was closed. People have to stay at home. Even temples were also closed !  People talked a lot about this topic. When the money came people built a temple rather than a hospital, so now temples are closed so where will they go ? Same thing is happening in this time also that there are people like this king who are using money only to become famous and popular. There is no humanity in their hearts. People face a lot of problems during the corona pandemic. But the thing is that God is not in temples but in you ! And that can be reflected through your behavior, your way of treating others ! 

2) Why do you think the King is angry on the Sage?

King is angry with the sage because the sage doesn't accept the proposal of the king. King offered him a beautiful temple for living there and for worship. But the sage denied his offer by saying that God is not there in the temple, God has gone away with the poor people. There is no need for this beautiful temple if you can't help poor people who are your (King's) responsibility. The sage speaks truth and all we know that,

"Truth is always bitter !"

So that's why the king thought that the sage was insulting my decision. The sage hurts the ego of the king. This is why the king is angry with him. 

3) Why do you think the Sage denies to enter in the temple?

The sage denied to enter in the temple because he believes that God is not living in the gold temples. He thinks that God is living with the pure and kind people. What should we do with this gold, if the gold came from poor people's hard work. If they don't have enough food for survival, this gold temple is useless ! Instead of living there God will choose to live under the trees because the  poor people take rest under that tree. 

4) Can there be any connection between the text of the poem and the verdict of Ayoydhya Ram Mandir? 

Yes ! There is a connection between the text of the poem and the verdict of Ayodhya Ram Mandir. When our prime minister bricks the first stone in Ram Mandir Ayodhya that time this poem came out on social media and became viral. It's deep connection with this poem and Ayodhya temple. As we know, people around us are very religious. They spend crores of rupees to build temples. See the position of poor people in India, there are millions of people who are not able to get food at one time and on the other side people are wasting money to build statues and temples. Even our government is spending money on building these stuff rather than building hospitals and schools !   If you develop your country you should make your health and education system strong. And I think temples are not going to help you in building a developed country.

Thank you.

Thinking Activity : Marxism, Feminism, Queer theory and Ecocritisim

 Hello readers !!! 

I'm Latta Baraiya and I'm a student of the English department, MKBU. Today in this blog I'm going to discuss about the theories; Marxism, Ecocriticism, Feminism and Queer criticism. This thinking Activity is assigned by our professor Dilip Barad sir. So let's see how this criticism works in different fields. 

• Marxist criticism

Before beginning the example of reading criticism in a text, first we have to understand what is Marxism ? and what is Marxist criticism ? What do they do ?

So first I would like to give one definition of Marxism. This is the political and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, later developed by their followers to form the basis of communism. According to Merriam Webster,  

This is a theory and practice of socialism including the labor theory of value, dialectical materialism, the class struggle, and dictatorship of the proletariat until the establishment of a classless society. 

So we can say that Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict as well as a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. Now let's try looking at the society created in a classic piece of literature, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. This book takes place in the American South in the 19th century and follows a white boy, Huck, as he helps a black slave, Jim, escape his situation. Here we've got quite a bit more detail. Instead of just two large classes, society is really divided into several smaller ones.

As a result, a Marxist critique would focus not only on those classes, but also what happens when they break down. After all, Huck and Jim form a bond that society would have forbidden. Because of this, it would be argued that Twain wanted society to get rid of race-based castes altogether, since they only kept humanity in bondage.

• Feminist criticism 

Are a feminist ? This question might be coming to your mind and also asked by somebody many times. So what is Feminism and how does it work ? That we will see here. First, let’s understand what feminism is meant to be.

If you look up the definition of “Feminism” in the dictionary, you’ll see these statements:

Feminism is:

1. The advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.

2. The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.

3. The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.

4. The doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. 

Now let's read feminism in The Great Gatsby. In the 21st century, it may be difficult to imagine a time when women were not even allowed to vote. However, prior to 1920, when the U.S. Congress ratified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, female American citizens did not enjoy this right. The Great Gatsby takes place just two years after the ratification of this amendment during the Jazz Age. The Jazz Age, also known as the Roaring Twenties, was a time of dramatic cultural, economic, and social change in America, where not only men, but also women, drank and engaged in extramarital sex.  

Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan's mistress, is another example of females as property in The Great Gatsby. Tom even refers to Myrtle as 'his girl' when he talks about her to others. However, Myrtle is also her husband's, George Wilson's, girl, an auto mechanic who does not provide her with the lifestyle she desires. As a means of escape from her economically and emotionally unhappy marriage, Myrtle looks to another man to satisfy her needs. 

• Queer theory

Countries like India have not started to give importance to the third gender yet. So it is very pivotal to study them also. They are also human beings, they have equal rights, they have their dreams though all should see them as human beings. So the first thing I would like to discuss here is what is queer theory ? 

If we look Queer Theory (QT) is both theory and political action. Definition is impossible, but QT can be summarised as exploring the oppressive power of dominant norms, particularly those relating to sexuality, and the immiseration they cause to those who cannot, or do not wish to, live according to those norms. 

According to Dr. Mary Klages, UC Boulder ; 

The word "queer" in queer theory has some of these connotations, particularly its alignment with ideas about homosexuality. Queer theory is a brand-new branch of study or theoretical speculation; it has only been named as an area since about 1991. It grew out of gay/lesbian studies, a discipline which itself is very new, existing in any kind of organized form only since about the mid-1980s. Gay/lesbian studies, in turn, grew out of feminist studies and feminist theory. 

Have a look at this video :- 

 

Shakespeare’s male dominated sonnets are most closely viewed in contemporary literature through Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Mr. W.H. This is one of the first pieces of literature that openly explores gay themes, a coming-out story of a sorts. This story follows a protagonist coming to terms with his sexuality with the help of Shakespeare’s sonnets, giving a very contemporary reading to these classic texts. The idea that the queer language within these texts can be used to help this character to understand such a large aspect of his life has given further appreciation to the writing and the subject matter.

The related theme within these sonnets relates directly to the “young man”, the narrator expresses his desire of admiring the man’s beauty, and that he wishes the man to sire a male heir, perhaps so he may pass on his beauty to future generations. This is clearly stated in Sonnet 3:

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should forme an other;

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

(Sonnet 3) 

The way in which the narrator wishes to capture the “young man’s” beauty by having a child contrasts with the narrator's idea that the “young man’s” beauty is being wasted as time goes on. The internal conflict can be seen within these sonnets in the way that the narrator explores conventional beauty and compares that which he sees in the “young man” and the “dark lady”. The poet personifies the notions of time and love in his sonnets, with negative and positive connotations. The concept of time is connected to the “young man”, through a parallel to beauty, there is an anxiety in the “young man’s” fading beauty that time will soon decay. Natural imagery is often used to mirror the “young man’s” beauty as nature too is only beautiful for a short period before time takes its toll, “Now is the time that face should form another”. 

The other example is Orlando : A Biography by Virginia Woolf. In which we see protagonist Orlando change his sex from man to woman. This is important and interesting example of queer theory to study.

• Ecocriticism

You all were aware about what ecocriticism is.

Ecocriticism is the study of literature and environment from an interdisciplinary point of view where all sciences come together to analyze the environment and brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary environmental situation. Ecocriticism was officially heralded by the publication of two seminal works, both published in the mid-1990s: The Ecocriticism Reader, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, and The Environmental Imagination, by Lawrence Buell. 

Ecocritics believe that we also have to investigate the concept of nature itself. Societies frequently view their own hierarchies and codes of conduct as natural, rather than as artificial and man-made. Literary texts can help us realize how human beings use nature for their own ends. 

A great example of an ecocritical reading of Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. 

Wordsworth treats the daffodils like a photo on a postcard. Wordsworth doesn’t involve himself in nature. Instead, he looks at nature from afar (like a cloud), and leaves as soon as he had his fill. In other words, Wordsworth acts like the tourist who comes by once and snaps a quick picture before moving on. In the end, Wordsworth seems more concerned about his own feelings than about nature, Wordsworth composes the landscape into aesthetic form from a single point, located outside that landscape, exactly in the manner of a picturesque viewer, and in the process constructs a purely visual and seemingly disembodied subjectivity. Even as he claims to connect to nature, he views that nature through a kind of invisible frame and turns it into a resource for the construction of his own seemingly autonomous self. 

Wordsworth is being too selective in his representation of the environment. In fact, Wordsworth’s attitude to the way Americans treasure their National Parks as perfect and pristine natural places, while caring less about the degradation of nature everywhere else.   

An Astrologer's Day Short Story and Movie Adaptation

 

Do you believe in astrology ? Many of you might be believing in that. Well many of you think whether astrologers are saying right or only they are making us fools. So today's blog is about astrology and how astrologers spend their days making people fools. I'm Latta Baraiya and I'm a student of the English Department, MKBU. This task is assigned by Vaidehi ma'am. To know more about the task click here. So let's discuss… 

First I would like to talk about the short story "An Astrologer's Day" by R. K. Narayan. 

Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami born on 10 October 1906 and died on 13 May 2001, commonly known as R. K. Narayan, was an Indian writer known for his work set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. He was a leading author of early Indian literature in English along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao. To read more about R. K. Narayan click here. 

The short story "An Astrologer's Day" is a very interesting story to read. An Astrologer's Day is a thriller, suspense short story by author R. K. Narayan. While it had been published earlier, it was the titular story of Narayan's fourth collection of short stories published in 1947 by Indian Thought Publications. It was the first chapter of the world famous collection of stories Malgudi Days which was later telecasted on television in 2006. 

This is a story about a man who runs away from his home and pretends to be an astrologer after imagining that he has committed a murder. In a strange situation, an ironic twist of fate, he runs into the very man he thought he had killed. 

This story tells us how fake astrologers make people fool. It happens because they know some common terms for allure people. And if you are tense, in pain, or unhappy, you are going to attract them. This common trick they use. Not only astrologers but politicians, religious sant and Tantrik also. 

Click here to read the full story. 

If we talk about the movie adaptation it captures the subject very well. We have several changes in the movie also, that I will discuss in the questions given below. 

You can watch the movie here. Click on this link :- 

https://youtu.be/TkfrjYFQozA 

Here are some questions to ponder upon :-

👉How faithful is the movie to the original short story?

The adaptation is good. It portrayed the subject of a story well. But here we can see some changes in the adaptation. The character of the daughter of that astrologer is completely missing in the original short story. It was added by the director in the movie adaptation. If we look at the story, some situations were changed in the movie adaptation. 

👉After watching the movie, have your perception about the short story, characters or situations changed?

If I talk about the story, I thought that story might end with the explosion of the astrologer. But at the end the story continued with the daily work which he is doing everyday. But the movie helped me to understand the concept very clearly. 

👉Do you feel ‘aesthetic delight’ while watching the movie? If yes, exactly when did it happen? If not, can you explain with reasons?

Yes. I feel aesthetic delight while watching the movie. If I talk about the exact time it happened when the mystery of Gurunanak was solved. While watching I'm very much aware of the relationship between the astrologer and Gurunanak. It also happened when the wife of an astrologer asked him to go back to their village and he denied. And why they leave their village. That time also I feel like there is something behind this. But when astrologer were afraid of Gurunanak, something was linked in my mind. I thought there was some connection between them. And later on we see what happened in the past. So that time I feel aesthetic delight. 

👉Does screening of movie help you in better understanding of the short story?

Yes. Screening of the movie helped me a lot to understand the short story "An Astrologer's Day". Because watching movies is more effective than reading. But the point to be noted is if we want to know deeply about a story or anything I must prefer to read a book. Movies have some limitations that can be solved by reading the original book only. But our concept becomes clear while watching the movie. Movie also uses different camera angles to explore their aesthetic. And that is useful to understand the main focus of the story. So the movie screening helped me to understand how the story was portrayed. Visual medium is also effective. So we can easily remember what we have seen rather than what we have read. 

👉Was there any particular scene or moment in the story that you think was perfect?

According to me, the movie captures the subject very well. Everything is perfect through the characters. All scenes also interlinked with each other. 

👉If you are the director, what changes would you like to make in the remaking of the movie based on the short story “An Astrologer’s Day” by R.K.Narayan? 

As a director of the movie I would like to change some shots of the movie. 

• First I will change the sequence of the movie. I prefer to share the scene of exposition first. Because it creates a curiosity in the audience to know why it's happening and what are the reasons behind it. That can make them connected with the film. 

• I will change the character of the wife of that astrologer. Because she didn't ask her husband about why he is doing this job, why he is cheating so many people. Instead of resisting, she behaves softly with her husband. She has to be a woman with dignity about the work they are doing. 

• If we look at her she is also unemployed. So I will make her do this kind of job so that she will earn some money. So she can face her husband also. 

• The other chance I will have is that I will try to expose the true reality of the astrologers. Who makes fools of people. At the end of the story they will be exposed by one educated person, because uneducated people are easily allured by this type of astrologer. So I will try to hide my face in front of people.

• If we think people learn things from their failure. So I think that should be included in the movie that after exposure he changes his job and becomes a good human being ! 

So these types of changes I will make if I'm a director of the movie.  I also recommend you to read the short story. If you haven't time to read full story, at least watch the movie adaptation of the story.