I worked with Professor Kim on his project in preparation for a spring 2015 course, “Goethe and World Literature.” In Professor Kim’s course, undergraduate students studied Goethe’s famous concept of world literature by using social network analysis to understand more profoundly the network of writers, translators, and scholars.
“The aim of this collaborative digital project is to examine the concept of world literature, a concept that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) has popularized since the beginning of the nineteenth century, with digital humanities methodology. To explore ways in which texts are translated across cultures, languages, and nations as exemplars of world literature, the project harnesses the power of social network analysis. It visualizes transnational networks of authors, translators, and scholars. In conjunction with conventional humanistic methods of scholarship, it goes far beyond what scholars and students are able to conceptualize alone.”
You can read more about the project and my participation in a blog post I contributed to the Center for Digital Humanities website titled: “WorldLiterature@UCLA: Using Social Network Analysis to Explore Goethe’s Concept of ‘Weltliteratur.’”
Gephi (network analysis), Google Fusion Tables
2015
Goethe–Schiller Monument, Weimar, Germany
(Flickr image courtesy of André Zehetbauer)
