Digital Scholarship Seminar:

Gerardine Meaney (University College Dublin)

A Comparative Social Network Analysis of Irish and English Fiction, 1800-1922

The Nation, Genre and Gender: A Comparative Social Network Analysis of Irish and English Fiction, 1800-1922 project is currently creating an electronic corpus of approximately 100 Irish and English novels from the period 1800-1922. It will use this corpus to identify key representative and influential texts for social network analysis, generate visualisations of networks and their development, apply intersectional (gender, class, ethnicity) analysis to network components, and engage in intensive critical analysis. The objective of the project is to compare gender, genre and the nationality of the author (or setting) in shaping social networks in fiction. Do the social networks mapped out by cumulative interactions between characters in Irish and English fiction differ from one another? Do the social networks represented in fiction differ substantially on the basis of genre or gender? How does this change across the time period? The historical range offers the opportunity for a longitudinal, transhistorical analysis which can identify consistencies and changes. The aim of the project is not to substitute a quantitative, computational approach for a critical and interpretative one, but to explore ways in which these two approaches can be reconciled. This combination of digital and critical methodologies also offers a realistic and judicious way to reconcile the demands of a radically extended canon of fiction, with its diversity of voices, genres and perspectives, and intense textual engagement. This paper will outline initial findings using Pride and Prejudice and Phineas Finn as examples.

Gerardine Meaney is Professor of Cultural Theory, Director of the UCD Humanities Institute and PI of Nation, Gender, Genre. Recent publications include Reading the Irish Woman: Cultural Encounter and Exchange, 1714-1960, with Bernadette Whelan and Mary O’Dowd (2013), Gender, Ireland and Cultural Change (2010) and an iPad app of James Joyce’s short story ‘The Dead’ (2014).

Seminars are open to all and conclude with discussion over lunch

For further informatition, contact: Dr PÌÁdraic Moran (padraic.moran@nuigalway.ie),

or Dr Justitin Tonra (justitin.tonra@nuigalway.ie)

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