CESTA Seminar Series | Simone Abbiati: Digital Sorrow: IRA Terrorism in fiction through the lens of Computational Literary Studies

Tuesday, February 21, 2023
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
(Pacific)

Encina Hall 2nd floor, William J. Perry Conference Room

Speaker: 
  • Simone Abbiati, University of Bergamo
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Simone Abbiati event

 

In this talk, Abbiati will explore how contemporary novels that depict the pain of IRA terrorism represent the perspective of victims. The talk will use computational methods to investigate the structural representation of pain in literary works dealing with "The Troubles", to then consider the emotional impact of using these methods to study politically engaged fiction. By analyzing the aesthetic experience of reading literature having it processed by algorithms, the presentation aims to shed light on the impact of computational literary analysis on the reader's empathetic response.

The presentation will include lunch and take place at the Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis in Wallenberg 433A. A Zoom link is available upon request from Center Manager, Jonathan Clark (jclark93@stanford.edu).


 

 

Simone Abbiati is a third-year PhD student in Transcultural studies in the humanities at University of Bergamo. His work relates to the hermeneutic rethinking of DH methodologies regarding fictional space, and he is particularly interested in combining text mining and digital cartography to reflect on politically debated spaces in literature. He is currently working on the British-Irish border and the Basque Country, with the aim of identifying how literature mirrored different border conceptions such as complex territorialization processes and terrorism.

Sponsored by the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, co-sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages and The Europe Center.