School of Information Sciences

Underwood authors new book on literary history

Ted Underwood
Ted Underwood, Professor

Professor Ted Underwood has authored a new book about recent discoveries in literary history and the changes that made those discoveries possible. His book, Distant Horizons: Digital Evidence and Literary Change, will be published by The University of Chicago Press Books in March and is available for pre-order.

In the book, Underwood shows how digital archives and statistical tools can deepen our understanding of issues that have always been central to humanistic inquiry. Large digital libraries like HathiTrust have made it possible for historians to survey hundreds of thousands of books across several centuries. Underwood explains how quantitative methods have become more flexible, "allowing us to grapple with slippery perspectival questions that wouldn’t have been suited to numbers in the twentieth century."

Underwood's work reveals how literary genres (like fiction and poetry) have tended to specialize with the passage of time.

Distant Horizons: Digital Evidence and Literary Change (book cover)

"Three hundred years ago, the language used in fiction was pretty similar to the language used in histories or biographies," he said. "But a gap gradually opened up between those genres. Today fiction tends to describe the world close-up and in slow motion; writers will spend a whole page describing what a character sees and smells walking down a street. Biographies rarely do that. But this wasn't a sudden revolution, brought about (say) by modernists in 1910. It was a very gradual shift, and we need numbers in order to trace the arc of change."

According to the publisher, Distant Horizons illustrates how digital methods can bring into focus the larger landscape of literary history and add to the beauty and complexity we value in literature.

Underwood is a professor in the iSchool and also holds an appointment with the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In addition to Distant Horizons, he has authored two other books about literary history, Why Literary Periods Mattered: Historical Contrast and the Prestige of English Studies (Stanford University Press, 2013) and The Work of the Sun: Literature, Science and Political Economy 1760-1860 (New York: Palgrave, 2005). His articles have appeared in PMLA, Representations, MLQ, and Cultural Analytics. Underwood earned his PhD in English from Cornell University.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

iSchool researchers present at CSCW 2025

Several faculty, students, and recent grads will present their research at the 28th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2025), which will be held October 18–22 in Bergen, Norway. The online portion of the conference will be held on October 10. 

Downie appointed executive associate dean

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Professor J. Stephen Downie has been appointed executive associate dean. In this role, he will work closely with Interim Dean Emily Knox to realize the iSchool's strategic goals and objectives. He also will provide leadership for the internal administration of the School, coordinate the work of associate deans and assigned staff, and facilitate faculty affairs.

Stephen Downie

Join the iSchool at the 2025 ALISE annual conference

Join iSchool faculty, staff, and students for the annual conference of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), which will take place from October 6–8 in Kansas City, Missouri. The theme of the 2025 conference is "Decolonising Pedagogies: Agency, Identity, Practices."

AISLE awards to be presented to alumni, adjunct lecturer

Carolyn Kinsella (MSLIS '03), Beverly Frett (MSLIS '04), and Adjunct Lecturer Karen Egan have been selected to receive awards from the Association of Illinois School Library Educators (AISLE). They will be honored at an awards banquet during the AISLE Annual Conference, which will be held from October 5–7 in Champaign, Illinois.

School of Information Sciences

501 E. Daniel St.

MC-493

Champaign, IL

61820-6211

Voice: (217) 333-3280

Fax: (217) 244-3302

Email: ischool@illinois.edu

Back to top