Blurbs, the Culture Industry, and the Uses of Literature

Explore the intersection of literature, culture, and data analytics in this comprehensive lecture on humanities analytics. Delve into the culture industry, book crossing phenomena, and reader behaviors through the lens of computational text analysis. Examine diverse data sources and user choice patterns to uncover insights about different types of readers. Learn how topic modeling techniques can reveal the palette of needs addressed by various literary genres, from wisdom literature to popular series. Discover the linkages between different reader needs and gain a deeper understanding of how digital humanities methods can extract meaning from literary texts. This lecture is part of the broader Foundations & Applications of Humanities Analytics course, designed to empower humanities scholars with practical skills in computational text analysis.