Selected Publications
The Economy of Critical Attention: A Computational Analysis of Roland Barthes’ S/Z
Published in Modern Language Quarterly
In this article, I use Roland Barthes’ S/Z as a proof of concept to argue that studying the distribution of critical attention quantitatively provides valuable new insights into the filtering models that operate within our literary critical tools and practices. With NLP and statistics, I address the logics and stakes of our literary-critical attention, whether as individuals or as a discipline.
Slow, Painful, and Expensive: Current Challenges in Text-Mining Corpus Construction for the Digital Humanities
Published in Digital Humanities Quarterly
Our goal in this paper is to document our attempt to take advantage of the TDM exemption legal framework to build a bespoke corpus of largely in-copyright, born-digital texts for the purpose of text mining. In the end, we have found the acquisition of texts under these constraints to be slow, painful, and expensive.
Imagined Solidarity in Girl, Woman, Other
Published in Journal of Postcolonial Writing
This article argues for a feminist imagined solidarity across vast differences, even national borders. Through Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and with reference to Benedict Anderson, bell hooks, Maria Lugones, and Chandra Mohanty, it builds a theory of imagined solidarity in contrast to Anderson's imagined community. Imagined solidarity is defined as a capacious and transnational imagination that joins across differences through a shared purpose.
The African Book Industry report
Published by UNESCO, co-editor and co-author
This UNESCO publication offers a snapshot of the African book industry, mapping its core trends, systemic challenges and strategic opportunities for growth. It is an invitation to policymakers, publishers, authors, and booksellers to come together for coordinated action. For the first time, a comprehensive mapping of the book industry across 54 African countries has been conducted by UNESCO.
Conceptual Anatomy of the Female Genitalia using Text Mining and Implications for Patient Care
Published in Medical Humanities
This article analyzes the conceptual histories of words associated with female genital parts (like ‘vulva’ and ‘vagina’) through literature review and presentation of new text mining results drawn from literary and women’s magazine corpora. These findings explain negative patient outcomes such as stigma attached to seeking out timely gynecologic care and lack of informed medical consent.
V.S.Naipaul's Booker Prize for In A Free State
Book chapter published in World Literature in Motion
I use archival and paratextual materials such as book covers to analyze the many institutional contingencies of literary categories such as the novel, as well as the writer's negotiation between institutional forces and their own creative agency. I reveal the process of adaptation the judges and coordinators of the Booker Prize had to undergo in order to capitalize on Naipaul's unconventional "novel".