TEXT MINING FOR HISTORIANS COURSE
UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO HISTORICAL TEXT MINING
Lecture (24 Mins)









KEY READINGS
*Luke Blaxill, The War of Words: the Language of British Elections 1880-1910 (Woodbridge, 2020)- chapters 1 +2 (‘Introduction’ and ‘On Method’)
*Daniel Greenstein, Historian's Guide to Computing (Oxford, 1994). An old book, but good on historians and quantification in general.
*Jo Guldi and David Armitage, The History Manifesto (Cambridge, 2015), chapter 4.
*Nan Z. Da, ‘The Computational Case against Computational Literary Studies’, Journal of Critical Inquiry (2019)

EXERCISES
Alone, or with a friend, make a list of five things that you think text mining might be able to help with your own research. What might it help you do better that you already do, and what new possibilities might it bring. You may want to consider the key readings for ideas.

Then, make a list of five ways in which you are sceptical about text mining as a tool for the sort of historical research that interests you.