Tracking Keywords in American Studies

<p><em>Tracking Keywords in American Studies</em> is a computational text analysis project that provides interactive data visualizations which allow for deeper analysis of issues and discourses in the American Studies journal <em>American Quarterly</em>. Taking inspiration from <em>Keywords for American Cultural Studies,</em> which provides a list of keywords to serve as an entry point into understanding American Studies, my project takes these keywords and plots their occurrence throughout <em>American Quarterly</em>. Complimentary to the word counts, I chart algorithmically generated topics produced using topic modeling to look at discourses in the journal. This offers a different perspective on American Studies than what is provided through<em> Keywords for American Cultural Studies</em>, showing topics which might not be represented in the keywords. Like <em>Keywords for American Cultural Studies</em>, the project is for classroom use, offering an introduction to computational text analysis. It uses data as a starting point to critique issues and disciplines in American Studies. For example, my analysis emphasizes and shows a correlation between the keywords “White” and “Race,” and show that whiteness is the center of conversations about race in <em>American Quarterly</em>. I point to how trends in the keyword chart show an increasing interdisciplinary influence in American Studies, too, which supports anecdotal impressions of the field. Further, I propose the creation of “Art” and “Education” as new keywords based on statistical evidence from the topic models.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Master

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Liberal Studies

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2020

Author dc:creator

• Cleary, Thomas

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Justin Rogers-Cooper

• American Studies
• Digital Humanities
• Computational Text Anaylsis
• Topic Modeling
• Data Vizualization

Licence

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3778

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-4796