Revisiting Josephine Miles: A Closer Look at Distant Reading
Dr. Jenny Kwok
Research Assistant Professor,
The University of Hong Kong
Abstract:
This seminar revisits the work of Josephine Miles, a pioneering figure in digital humanities, and reexamines her concordance project within its literary historical context. By focusing on the close reading nature of her project, this discussion highlights Miles’ often overlooked contributions to integrating quantitative methods into traditional literary studies and challenging the binary divide between close and distant reading. As the first female professor to gain tenure in the English Department at Berkeley, Miles was a trailblazer not only in the emerging field of digital humanities but also in conventional literary scholarship. Though widely known for her computational innovations, Miles was first and foremost a literary scholar, rigorously trained in traditional methods. Her interdisciplinary approach fused meticulous textual analysis with broad, data-driven insights, showcasing the inherent complementarity of close and distant reading long before the latter became central to digital humanities.
This seminar will argue that Miles’ work, particularly her influential Eras and Modes in English Poetry (1957), laid crucial groundwork for computational literary research, demonstrating how traditional scholarship can be enriched by quantitative methods, and vice versa. In an age where digital tools are often perceived as opaque and reductive, Miles’ careful methodology presents a compelling model for integrating literary expertise with computational techniques, offering fresh perspectives on the evolving relationship between traditional and digital approaches in the humanities.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Jenny Kwok is a Research Assistant Professor in Digital Humanities the Faculty of Arts. She is also Visiting Fellow of Cambridge Digital Humanities (CDH, 2024-25) of University of Cambridge, the Lab Coordinator of the Arts Tech Lab at the University of Hong Kong, and currently teaches in the BA in Humanities and Digital Technologies program.
Dr. Kwok’s research focuses on the application of Large Language Models (LLMs) in computational literary studies, ranging from general applications to specific stylistic analyses, with Irish literature as a case study. She is particularly interested in exploring the capabilities and limits of LLMs, examining how they can complement and enhance the nuanced interpretations involved in human and literary practices.
Her current research includes using LLMs to conduct advanced Named Entity Recognition (NER) on post-crash novels, with a focus on sentiment analysis; and the study of narrative patterns in literature related to The Troubles, written by authors from both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Additionally, she is optimizing search results and the utilization of existing online databases related to The Troubles by incorporating semantic search and fine-tuning LLMs specifically for analyzing Irish literature and events from that era.
Dr. Kwok’s forthcoming paper revisits Josephine Miles’ concordance project, arguing that instead of being a pioneer in distant reading, Miles’ work represents a form of close reading enhanced by distant reading techniques.
