This talk by Helen Baker and Tony McEnery (Lancaster) will examine the textual portrayal of beggars and vagrants by seventeenth-century English writers by means of a corpus-based analysis. The lecture will discuss what language was used to describe beggars and vagrants and what shift, if any, took place in their representation as the seventeenth century progressed. It aims to show what these findings can reveal about early modern English attitudes towards people experiencing poverty.
Digital History: New Data-Driven Approaches in the Humanities
As the digital humanities continue to boom, historians are discovering the potential of big data, computational techniques and corpus-driven methods for opening up new avenues of research.
The GHIL seminar series in the summer term 2015 will explore the possibilities and limitations of these new approaches at the intersection of historiography and linguistics. Scholars from both disciplines will present their research and ideas. They will discuss not only their methodology, but also its application in empirical case studies, covering a broad range of themes from medieval to contemporary history.
Seminars are held at 5.30 p.m. in the Seminar Room of the German Historical Institute. Guided tours of the Library are available before each seminar at 4.30 p.m.
