School of Information Sciences

National Humanities Center Fellowship supports Underwood book project

Ted Underwood
Ted Underwood, Professor

With support from the National Humanities Center, Professor Ted Underwood is examining patterns of human perspective throughout two centuries of literary history. The Center is a residential institute for advanced study in art history, classics, languages and literature, philosophy, and other fields of the humanities. In addition to pursuing their own research and writing at the Center, fellows form seminars and study groups with cohorts holding shared research interests.

Underwood received the Center's M. H. Abrams Fellowship for 2018-2019 for his book project, "A Perspectival History of Fiction in English, 1800-2008." The project builds on an insight from his book, Distant Horizons: Digital Evidence and Literary Change (The University of Chicago Press Books, 2019), that Underwood described as "capturing subjective associations that define a particular, time-bound perspective in literary history, which is often exactly the goal of our research."

"Recent advances in using computers to understand literary history have actually depended, in large part, on getting the perspective of human readers," he said. "If we just look for 'patterns in the library'—well, there are definitely a lot of patterns there! But we don’t necessarily know what they mean."

According to Underwood, in order to understand the human meaning in literary history, we need evidence about what readers thought at the time. For example, what kinds of literature had prestige, and how did readers in the early twentieth century sort books into genres? To obtain this sort of evidence on the scale needed for computational pattern analysis, Underwood is organizing a large database of book reviews of fiction, drawing on several different sources.

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). 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. He earned his PhD in English from Cornell University.

Research Areas:
Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Craig named Illinois Library Luminary

Anne Craig, iSchool adjunct lecturer and senior director of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI), has been inducted as an Illinois Library Luminary. The Illinois Library Luminary program, an initiative of the Illinois Library Association (ILA), recognizes those who have made a significant contribution to Illinois libraries.

Anne Craig

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. 

iSchool faculty and staff present at AISLE annual conference

Join the iSchool for the Association of Illinois School Library Educators (AISLE) annual conference, held October 5–7 at the I Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign, Illinois. The theme for the conference is “Libraries Build Connections.”

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

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