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Race and Distant Reading

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2020

Richard Jean So  and
Edwin Roland
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Abstract

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This essay brings together two methods of cultural‐literary analysis that have yet to be fully integrated: distant reading and the critique of race and racial difference. It constructs a reflexive and critical version of distant reading—one attuned to the arguments and methods of critical race studies—while still providing data‐driven insights useful to the writing of literary history and criticism, especially to the history and criticism of postwar African American fiction, in particular James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. Because race is socially constructed, it poses unique challenges for a computational analysis of race and writing. Any version of distant reading that addresses race will require a dialectical approach. (RJS and ER)

Information

Type
Special Topic: Varieties of Digital Humanities
Information
PMLA , Volume 135 , Issue 1: Special Topic Varieties of Digital Humanities , January 2020 , pp. 59 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Richard Jean So and Edwin Roland

References

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