Underwood and students present research at CHR2020

Ted Underwood
Ted Underwood, Professor
Wenyi Shang
Wenyi Shang
Yuerong Hu
Yuerong Hu

Professor Ted Underwood, PhD students Wenyi Shang and Yuerong Hu, MS/IM students Anirudh Sharma and Shubhangi Singhal, and English PhD student Peizhen Wu will present their research at the Workshop on Computational Humanities Research (CHR2020), which will be held virtually from November 18-20. The purpose of the workshop is to "foster the formation of a community of humanities scholars that rely on a wide range of computational approaches" and to serve as a stepping stone toward the creation of a research-oriented, open-access computational humanities journal.

Underwood and the students will present their paper, "The Rise and Fall of Genre Differentiation in English-Language Fiction," in which they examine the strength of textual differentiation between genres of fiction in a collection of English-language books dating from 1860 to 2009.

"We know that new genres can emerge over time," said Underwood. "The categories we call 'mystery' and 'science fiction' weren't clearly defined in 1850, but by 1950 they described sharply distinct kinds of writing. In this paper, we ask whether the process can also go in the other direction. Can existing genres blur and melt together? We found this was true not only for specific genres, but for the genre system as a whole. The books grouped in a particular category in the twenty-first century tend to be less different from other categories than they were in the middle of the twentieth century. To check that this wasn't just an accident of library classification, we also tested the hypothesis with genre categories inferred from book reviews and found the same thing."

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. His research interests include statistical and computational modeling of humanistic evidence, machine learning and text mining, book history, digital libraries, sociology of literature, computational social science, and digital humanities. Underwood earned his PhD in English from Cornell University.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Get to know David Eby, PhD student

With his Choctaw and Muscogee Creek heritage, PhD student David Eby has a personal connection to his research, which seeks to blend Indigenous knowledge with quantitative data practices. Eby, who is a member of Native American House at University of Illinois, is also interested in analyzing online community identity and representation. 

David Eby

Spectrum Scholar Spotlight: Mateo Caballero

Twelve iSchool master’s students were named 2024-2025 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. This "Spectrum Scholar Spotlight" series highlights the School's scholars. MSLIS student Mateo Caballero graduated from Northeastern University with a BA in communications and media and screen studies.

Mateo Caballero

iSchool represented at Charleston Conference

iSchool adjunct and affiliate faculty will participate in virtual and in-person sessions of the 2024 Charleston Conference. The conference is an annual gathering that draws librarians, publishers, vendors, and others to discuss issues relating to the acquisition and publication of books and serials. 

Schneider group to present at ASIS&T workshop

Members of Associate Professor Jodi Schneider’s group will present their research at the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Workshop on Informetric, Scientometric, and Scientific and Technical Information Research, which will be held virtually on November 6 and 13. The MET-STI 2024 Workshop is collaboratively hosted by the Special Interest Group for Metrics (SIG-MET) and Special Interest Group for Scientific and Technical Information (SIG-STI) of ASIS&T.

Jodi Schneider

iSchool International: Studying abroad in Melbourne

BSIS + DS student Jenny Mai discusses her study abroad experience in Melbourne, Australia, a country filled with energy, culture, and a laid-back but driven attitude. According to Mai, "living in Melbourne has been more transformative" than she expected!

Jenny Mai