Wenyi Shang

Glad I had the opportunity to hear Matt's presentation on this project at the University of Missouri before it comes out!

20 years ago, you may also often encounter a strong belief that a distinct, new thing called "machine learning" was invented recently, while regression before that date was reliable and transparent🤣

I saw the news on the very same day my CHR2025 paper was accepted. It might mean I won't be able to attend the conference, for the third time that I've had a paper accepted☹️

My line: DH researchers are likely those I consider my immediate colleagues, those using AI in the humanities are not.

My first impression when I studied the history was quite different, as I tend to be wary of anything supported by the Soviet Union, and it's also clear that the Republicans also committed mass killings and other crimes. But perhaps that reaction is just my own bias...

Actually, I was wondering what the general opinion of Western academics is regarding the Spanish Civil War. Is it commonly framed as a clear dichotomy, with the Republicans seen as the "justice/liberal" side and the Nationalists as the "evil/authoritarian/conservative" side?

I think Springfield corresponds to Madrid, geographically and politically. Maybe Champaign corresponds to Valencia?

It is indeed hard. Chinese folks are quickly shifting to more trendy terms like "AI for the humanities." But we will try. I believe DH will not remain a distinct field in future, but precisely because distant reading will become fully integrated as just another approach to doing humanities research.

Figure 1 with annotations

Please join us in person or online if you can! I'll be presenting virtually, while Carsten will be on site in Lisbon. Feel free to chat with him locally or reach out to me online with any questions. (Hint: I'm the methodology person for this project. Please direct any Kafka questions to Carsten! 🤣)

We investigated the semantic and rhetoric imagery of The Trial through 3 illustrated editions. Using image analysis and examining the relationship between images and corresponding texts, we found them more closely associated with sentences than chapters and uncovered artistic & hermeneutic nuances.

Today at 3:30pm Lisbon Time (busy day for me!) I will also be presenting our work, "A Study of Imagery in Franz Kafka's Novel The Trial Through Illustrated Editions" with my colleague at the University of Missouri, Professor Carsten Strathausen at #DH2025.

Our findings highlight a discourse shaped by patriarchal privileges, echoing the assertion that "the subaltern cannot speak." I'll be presenting virtually, while Professor Ochi will be on site in Lisbon. Feel free to chat with her locally or reach out to me online with any questions!

Using Transformer-based models, we examined how males and females were depicted differently in medieval Chinese epitaph verses, and which classical texts (the Analects 論語, the Book of Rites 禮記, or the Book of Songs 詩經) these verses resemble.

Presenting our work, “Text Mining Gender Depictions in Northern Wei (386–539 C.E.) Epitaph Verses,” with Professor Seiko Ochi (Meijo University, Japan) today at 2 PM Lisbon time at #DH2025! Please join us in person or online if you can!

Curious about what @tedunderwood.me's answer to this question would be🤔

"popular hero" for being guillotined😅

Wow, that's incredible, especially considering the election of the new Pope took most observers and the betting markets by surprise. Do we have access to the underlying data to check what exactly is considered a "relationship" in the network?

We now have Math majors whose career paths range from professional NFL player (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ur...) to Catholic Pope.

Interesting coincidence: Pope Leo XIV and Fr. Chase Hilgenbrinck, former chaplain at UIUC's Catholic Newman Center, are both Illinois natives and spent significant time in South America. Pope Leo XIV was ordained in 1982, when Fr. Chase was born, and consecrated in 2014, when Fr. Chase was ordained.

That said, one aspect of CHR's policy I do find problematic is its restriction to LaTeX submissions only, which places an undue burden on many humanities scholars who are unfamiliar with the format. @comphumresearch.bsky.social

to some degree, social science and LIS). In this context, I think the importance of maintaining anonymity in the peer review process may outweigh the drawbacks of CHR's policy on preprint embargo.

Great point. But in my opinion DH is not a field that moves as quickly as CS (the most cutting-edge methods are not always the central concern). And preprints are not yet widely recognized as a standard form of publication among many scholars in the field (for positions in the humanities, and

Thanks for introducing the Bender Rule! I hadn't thought much about this when coming up with the title (probably because I am a non-native English speaker myself), but I completely agree: it's important to explicitly mention the language being studied.

And while this is an online-only presentation, I've long been inspired by the city of Shiraz—home to Saadi and Hafez, and a city of literature and flowers—making it a fitting setting for a talk on poetry!

Invited by Shiraz University's Digital Humanities Association, I'll be presenting my work with @tedunderwood.me on classifying English poetry tomorrow at 8:30am US Central Time via Google Meet. Excited to be part of the growing global conversation on DH, including students and scholars from Iran!

A great opportunity especially for those new to DH! The workshop will include three days of lectures introducing DH methods, taught by @vierth.bsky.social, @tharsen.bsky.social, Michael Fuller, @rmostern.bsky.social, Sunkyu Lee, and myself, followed by two days dedicated to workshopping ideas.

Yeah, I can imagine. I wasn't trying to suggest that the current situation is good: just that it feels more like a secular autocracy than a theocracy, which closely resembles the kind of system I'm familiar with in China.

My friend said it's probably quite rare for foreigners to immediately understand what's going on, and this kind of scenario seems increasingly plausible here in the US now. Another observation: Turkey, China, and the US are the three countries where I find most national flags displayed everywhere.

When I visited Turkey in 2023, I found it much more secular than I had expected, and in many ways, it reminded me of China. On the first night we arrived, our bus was randomly stopped by the police, and all passengers were asked to show their IDs. The officer smiled when we handed him our passports.