BYU faculty and students present at Digital Humanities Utah.
In the world of academia, conferences and symposia are as common as flowers in May. What makes the Digital Humanities Utah (DHU) symposium unusual is the lack of formality—something that scholars in digital humanities appreciate as typical of their diverse group. According to its website, DHU “welcomes humanities scholars from across the Intermountain West and beyond” as colleges across the state take turns hosting “early career scholars, graduate students, newcomers to the digital humanities (DH), and members of traditionally underrepresented groups.” While the digital humanities are “OK with throwing away tradition,” Associate Research Professor Jeremy Browne (Digital Humanities) explained that conferences like these still fulfill the main purposes of academic gatherings: to share ideas and research, get feedback from other scholars, and come together as a group.
This year’s conference, DHU7, took place in Cedar City, Utah, at Southern Utah University on February 24–25, 2023. In discussing the informality of the conference, Browne said, “It is probably the only conference where the next location is decided via ‘tag a friend,’” where there is no official hosting order and the next college to host is decided via a poster at the current conference. Browne described the environment as “loosey goosey,” friendly without being chaotic. Much of this likely comes from the diverse group of people who participate in digital humanities.
Several students and faculty from different academic areas at BYU presented their research, which ranged in topics but all had to do with using digital tools to answer human questions. Some topics were familiar to those who follow the Office of Digital Humanities at BYU, and others were new, like the presentation from Assistant Research Professor Rob Reynolds (Digital Humanities, Linguistics) and Associate Professor Grant Madsen (College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences). They presented with a group of students on the topic of presidential morality.
Presidential Morality
All presidents give speeches, right? Have you ever wondered if there are patterns or reasons to the specific ways different presidents of the United States use rhetoric in their speeches? Reynolds and Madsen’s research uses digital tools to look for patterns and make predictions on how presidents mobilize moral language to get people to do something by appealing to their moral sensibilities. This study combines history, political science, statistics, humanities, and computer science. The professors have been working on their research for three years with various groups of students who range just as much in their areas of study and expertise.
Madsen explains that while they have run and modified the algorithms a few times, examining presidents’ speeches for key topics around moral language and how they mobilize moral language, the results have been widely inconclusive. But they presented on their inconclusive findings at the conference, and the panel gave excellent suggestions on how they could go forward with their research and improve it. “This is the process; this is the reason for a conference,” Madsen says.
Reynolds says, “The opportunity to present at a regional conference was both excellent motivation and great professional experience for those who are thinking about graduate school. Our project is still a work in progress, so the results we presented at DHU7 weren’t particularly earth shattering, but these students have made unique contributions and facilitated exciting progress. I can’t wait to see what we can accomplish before they graduate!”
In discussing presidential morality, Mason Flannery (Statistics ’23), a student working with Reynolds and Madsen, says, “Who would’ve thought that Roosevelt would focus so much on loyalty or that Clinton would spend so much time talking about kindness?” Flannery comments that he is impressed by how he has come to know presidential personalities better through this project.
“This is my first experience doing research,” Flannery reflects. “It has been interesting and enlightening to see the marriage of two seemingly unrelated topics: natural language processing and American history. Funny enough, it seems that I have learned a lot about both topics.” That’s how the interdisciplinary nature of digital humanities really shines. As Madsen puts it, “It is in overcoming the barriers created by our specialty that we grow.”
Especially in the digital humanities, where scholars come from so many diverse places of study that they typically wouldn’t interact with one another, experiences like this—where digital humanities practitioners can question, discover, share and get feedback—are the reason for conferences. The University of Utah has been “tagged” to host DHU8 next year, and all are welcome. If you just can’t wait for next year, you can look through the list of topics and presenters from DHU7 here.