Networks and Network Analysis for Humanities

Call for Applications

Applications are currently being accepted for an NEH Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities at UCLA, August 15-27, 2010. Applications must be submitted online no later than November 5, 2009. For more information, and for the online application, please visit

http://www.ipam.ucla.edu/programs/hum2010

In recent years, attention has been drawn in both the academic and popular press to the ubiquity of networks in everyday life, from communications networks to investment networks to power transmission networks to social networks. As a result of this increasing awareness, the study of the different types of networks that link us together, and the analysis of the structure of those networks has risen to greater and greater prominence not only in the mathematical and social sciences but also in the Humanities.Despite this increasing awareness of the importance of networks for theoretical advances in the Humanities, there is a considerable gap between recognizing in the broadest strokes the existence of these complex, dynamic systems and the very hard work of the consistent application of rigorous theoretically sound methods to the study of networks. Computational tools for the discovery and analysis of networks offer the promise of bridging this gap; unfortunately,many of these tools are as complex to work with as the underlying data itself.A main goal of this institute is to teach Humanities scholars some of the most accessible of these techniques.

In broadest terms, the topics to be addressed in the Institute are:

(a) the science of networks and networks in Humanistic inquiry

(b) preparing and cleaning Humanities data for network analysis

(c) internal networks in Humanistic data: networks of characters, networks of texts,networks of language

(d) external networks in Humanistic data: networks of influence, networks of production, networks of reception.