Quinn Dombrowski - Coding, Childcare, and Badly-Behaved Tools: Adventures in Multilingual 'Data-Sitting'

When: 2022-05-02 18:00-20:00 (Tallinn time)
Where: CUDAN Open Lab (online)

Video of the seminar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXvuRjs7cFU
Websites: https://datasittersclub.github.io/site/books and https://www.quinndombrowski.com/

Abstract – Quinn Dombrowski, Academic Technology Specialist in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at Stanford University, gives a lecture on Coding, Childcare, and Badly-Behaved Tools: Adventures in Multilingual “Data-Sitting”.

Patience, persistence, trying to make sense of bizarre error messages: these are only some of the similarities between attempting computational text analysis across multiple languages, and taking care of small children during a pandemic. In this talk, Quinn Dombrowski will reflect on the work of the “Data-Sitters Club”, a multilingual, feminist DH pedagogy project that aims to demistify computational text analysis, using Ann M. Martin’s 80’s and 90’s girls' book series “The Baby-Sitters Club” as an example corpus. While these methods can be challenging to understand and implement for people working on Anglophone texts, deviating from the default assumptions of English adds significant additional complications. How does treating documentation as care work shift our perspective on computational methods? Furthermore, how can a thoughtful approach to teaching computational methods prepare DH scholars for emergency response efforts, at moments when it is necessary to set aside academic questions in order to engage with current events?