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Tag: Colonialism

Topic Modeling 18th Century American Correspondence

Posted in Digital Humanities, and Percolating Ideas

This is a lightning talk of ongoing research, given at the 2018 American Historical Association meeting on January 4, 2018. I’ve revised the text of the talk to provide more details about this project below. Initially, this talk was entitled, “Text Mining 18th Century American Correspondence,” but I began my…

Introductory Text Analysis with Google’s ngram Viewer

Posted in Digital Humanities, and Percolating Ideas

Simple curiosity motivated the creation of these few graphs, but they will also be used in a graduate text analysis for humanists class as examples of the kinds of questions we can ask and answer with simple and accessible tools. Is there a correlation between uses of the words “frontier,”…

The Heterogeneous World of the Wabash and Ohio Valleys, 1760-1778

Posted in Percolating Ideas

In the years prior to the American Revolution, the Ohio and Wabash Valleys, along with the Illinois Country, was a world of interconnected villages characterized by face-to-face interactions. In the eighteenth century, this territory was home to semi-nomadic and agricultural Native communities, including (from east to west) Delaware, Shawnee, Wyandot,…

Setting up a Comparison: Settler Colonization in the American Midwest and French Algeria

Posted in Percolating Ideas

Why do a comparative study? Why choose these two very different and seemingly unrelated regions? I’ve received these questions often enough that they merit an explanation. Please bear with me as my response is a little lengthy. This is a complex project! I’ve added subheadings to make navigating this post…

Civilization, American Indians, and the Noble Savage Myth in French Colonial and American Discourses

Posted in Percolating Ideas

If you weren’t able to attend our panel at the American Studies Association Conference (November 15-18, 2012) in San Juan or if you were and would like a second look at my presentation, the links to the paper and PowerPoint are included below.  Please note that the PowerPoint is intended…