Jeffrey Leichman will begin this discussion with his innovative reconstruction of a proposed theater in 19th-century Louisiana. This presentation presents the 1805 project, developed between 2020 and 2024, which involved digital architectural modeling, building a database of French-language theatrical performances in Territorial New Orleans (1803-1812), and producing a live concert of works identified in the database that also served as a proof-of-concept for acoustical VR modeling within a specially equipped theatre on the LSU campus. The research advanced in three separate stages, each leading to distinctive outcomes while also contributing to the ambitions of the next phase, illustrating the potential for broad-based, long-term engagement through collaborative digital projects. At each phase, digital humanities approaches and processes were instrumental in creating interest and engagement around historical cultural objects, modeling how new technologies can be an effective lever for revitalizing historically oriented fields when used in a layered, sequential approach capable of advancing both primary research and educational goals. For this presentation, Leichman will specifically show how digital reconstructions can animate traditional scholarship on early American theater and its connection with the Haitian diaspora.

Chloe Edmondson will continue the discussion reflecting on the challenges and limitations of adapting digital methods to historical data for eighteenth-century studies, considering in particular the methods of social network analysis and prosopography for the study of the Republic of Letters. This presentation will first, synthesize recent research by scholars working in this area, including Claire Lemercier, Giovanna Ceserani, Kelsey Rubin-Detlev, Nicholas Cronk, and Dan Edelstein, who have shown through their research both on methods, as well as eighteenth-century case studies, the difficulties of applying quantitative and digital methods to historical data, which is by default incomplete. Second, Edmondson will propose innovative approaches to deal with historical data and leverage the benefits of social network analysis and prosopography, in order to reveal new insights about Enlightenment social networks, whether correspondence networks of the philosophes, or the networks of the salons. In this portion of her presentation, she will highlight how data-driven analysis of Enlightenment networks can contribute fresh perspectives to longstanding scholarly debates about the Republic of Letters.

Scott Sanders will conclude the session on distant approaches to reading with AI. His work follows Christoph Schöch’s work on topic modelling and theatrical genre. With Sanders’ meta-analysis of gender and theatrical works, he devised a series of prompts with which he asked Large Language Models to rank each character based on a specific category. he then read through 20 plays and implemented his own ranking of characters. This distant form of reading provided insights into AI-assisted distant reading. The ranking system Sanders deployed is a formalist exercise that allows a reader to consider the attributes of theatrical genres. For instance, are the formalist features of a comedy shared by genres adjacent to comedies such as the comédie larmoyante? By ranking characters alongside AI, Sanders then engaged with and modified his experiment. Sanders hopes to turn this process into a pedagogical practice in which students define theatrical genres through the creation of formalistic definition, which students in turn refine through an evaluation of their definition. This final element extends Frank Moretti’s approach to distant reading and applies it to the AI age.

Discussion Time

Each panelist will have 20 minutes to present their paper followed by a 15-minute discussion section. This panel, with its interrogation of digital approaches to traditional humanistic questions, seeks to engage scholars in a discussion on pedagogy and research. Through this discussion, we hope to evaluate the place of digital methodologies across humanistic approaches to texts and cultural objects.