3:00-4:30 Public Talk and Discussion (Click here for RSVP)
4:30-5:30 Workshop\, Pre-registration requested (Click here for RSVP)
With Dr. Ryan Nichols (Full Professor\, Department of Philosophy\, California State University\, Fullerton) and
Dr. Edward Slingerland (Distinguished University Sc holar | Professor of Asian Studies\, UBC)
Ryan Nichols: Supernatural Agents and Prosociality in Historical China
Edward Slingerland:
The creation of digital\, fully- searchable text corpora opens up entirely new analytic possibilities for re searchers\, especially sinologists\, who have a wealth of such corpora at t heir disposal. It remains the fact\, however\, that scholarly arguments in the field are still supported primarily with small numbers of cherry-picked examples\, with no attempt to document larger patterns or trends.
Th is event will begin with two talks illustrating how large-scale text analys is tools can help to resolve long-standing interpretative debates or uncove r new patterns in the texts that we read. Such efforts are best pursued by interdisciplinary teams\, and we will discuss the challenges in creating th ese sorts of collaborations. With some guidance\, however\, individuals can also begin to experiment with these new methodological tools. The talks wi ll be followed by an optional\, hands-on workshop allowing participants to learn how to perform their own analyses using freely-available software pac kages.
Following the public talk\, Prof. Nichols will run a han ds-on workshop focused on the basics of text mining and large-scale text analysis\, and using Donald Sturgeon’s Chinese Text Project corpus as our material. Although the text to be analyzed i s in classical Chinese\, the workshop itself will be held in English\, and knowledge of classical Chinese—though helpful—is not strictly necessary to benefit from the workshop.
Prior to the workshop\, participants are r equested to download the latest version of AntConc\, a freeware text-m ining application for all platforms. It would be best if participants began to familiarize themselves with how to use the program by uploading a text file and playing with it beforehand\, but they will be walked through its u se in the workshop.
In addition\, participants are asked to follow th
e Dropbox link below so that they can download the corpus
to be analyzed during the workshop onto their local hard drive. Click