Geography of Literature

rev. 14.6

Project Summary:

The Geography of Literature project explores the processes by which literary and historical texts registered the growth of the inter-connected cultural worlds in medieval Europe and Asia, and beyond. The visualization software provides an interactive tool to explore the relationships among cultures in literary references.

The software system supporting the interactive interface includes text classification software and reference estimation for the analysis of a large corpus of literary and historical texts.

Team

Tamar Boyadjian, English, MSU
Matthew Fisher, English, UCLA
Ani Nahapetian, CS, CSUN
Matthew Hamersky, CS, CSUN
David-Christopher Harris, English, OSU
Shant Mandossian, CS, CSUN
Costas Sideris, CS, UCLA

Acknowledgements

Supported by the UCLA OVCR-COR Transdisciplinary Seed Grant, 2012-2013, Comparative Text Classification and the Literary Geography of Otherness, 1100 - 1500, PI: Matthew Fisher, co-PIs: Tamar Boyadjian and Ani Nahapetian.

How To

Using the Control Panel

  • Time: Move the ends of the slider to show or hide keywords from books written in certain time periods.

  • Focus: Focus is a measure of how relevant a book is. Using the focus slider shows or hides books associated with certain foci.

  • Filters: There are three ways to filter keywords here. Choosing a country from the first drop-down list will hide the keywords on the map that are from books not written in the selected country. Selecting a country will also populate the second drop-down list with all the books written in the country. Likewise, selecting a book from the second drop-down list will hide all keywords on the map that aren't from the selected book. Finally, the keyword search can be used to find keywords that are displayed on the map. A successful search will center in on the keyword's location and also hide all keywords that don't match the search. Any of the three filters that are chosen can be removed by pushing the 'x' button.

  • Map View: The regional view shows borderlines and country names while the topographic view shows the physical features of the terrain.

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