Seeing Shakespeare in A New Light (Dedicated to Kaleigh)

Who would have thought that Shakespeare's personal pronoun usage would vary for his comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances?  I certainly never thought about it.  Way to go, Kaleigh, for exploring this idea through the means of digital humanities!  I love how in addition to looking at Shakespeare in a new light, she incorporated work done at Brigham Young University.  My Linguistics class has spoken frequently about the Corpora of British and American English or COCA/COHA, and I have to use a similar corpus for my research paper in that class.  These corpuses allow us to research words and grammar in a new way, being able to quickly see how many times a certain word is used either throughout history or in the modern world.

Kaleigh argues that a marriage is needed between the two methods of study, traditional methods and the digital humanities movement.  They truly do enhance the other.  As I mentioned in a previous post, my research paper did not make my argument come alive as well as my blog did with the usage of pictures, videos, etc.  I feel this is true for many research papers.  They are well written and have a good point, but they lack the energy to really engage the reader in the work.  With the use of both text-analytic techniques and the incorporation of digital media, not only would the paper be more engaging to a scholastic audience, but also to many non-scholastic audiences.  With Kaleigh's paper, I see her paper being applicable to any person trying to teach or learn.  There is something special added when a visual aid is used; the learner is allowed another experience with the idea, allowing more of their own ideas to be formed because they have more information to form them with.

One idea I had for Kaleigh would be to connect Shakespeare's process with the process of a modern writer such as Salman Rushdie, who recently spoke about donating his personal papers to the university archives at Emory.  He speaks about how computers and other technology have affected his writing and creative process.  It then turns to how archival science and archival access have changed the way he uses his own archives.  How would it be to cite a YouTube video in your research paper, or better yet, have that video as a part of your research paper?



As the picture above says, digital humanities are allowing the writing process to transform through technology.  We have so much information at our fingertips in multiple formats.  Why would we limit ourselves to the written word when so much more is available?  That is not to say that traditional writing is not important; this format has been the source of the spread of academic knowledge for years and still has a place in society today.  However, the process and format does not need to be set in stone.  With the technology available, some bending of the rules should now be allowed to connect with an audience used to getting answers quickly.  By incorporating a simple 30 second movie clip of Hamlet, with the scene of Ophelia coming to the water, I feel I would be able to better convey the emotion and psychological processes behind her actions.  Kaleigh states in her paper, "Digital humanities allow for an expansion beyond traditional textual analysis, taking the foundation built by good old-fashioned research and broadening the scope of comprehension through new mediums. In this way, digital studies are an essential tool to furthering the research of humanities and texts in the modern age and should not be seen as an unusual and unscholarly, no matter how unconventional the methods of research may appear."

Does this not just say iPad to you?  How amazing would it be to pick up a 20 page academic paper in the form of a computer or iPad that allows you to explore the pictures, videos, Powerpoints, etc. that inspired the ideas of the author!  This would allow the reader to better understand the thought process of the author and help them to have a stronger basis on which they can form their own ideas on the subject.  Another way to show the power of digital humanities would be to discuss the new digital books which are interactive with pictures, videos, and data visualizations.

I do not know if this is where Kaleigh wishes to take her research, but if she wanted a more narrow topic, she could pick a specific area of the digital humanities to explore how the use of digital books or/and archival science would change how people read and experience Shakespeare and his grammar.  Great job, Kaleigh!  I am excited to see your research and learn more about the digital humanities with Shakespeare's grammar.