Folger Shakespeare Library's "Early Modern Digital Agendas: Network Analysis (EMDA2017)" institute

FAIN: HT-251006-16

Folger Shakespeare Library admin by Trustees of Amherst College (Washington, DC 20003-1004)
Edwin Williams (Project Director: March 2016 to November 2019)

A two-week summer institute and follow-up workshop for 12 participants to explore network analysis approaches to early modern studies. The institute would be hosted at the Folger Shakespeare Library with a variety of visiting experts.

The Folger Institute proposes to host a two-week institute on “Early Modern Digital Agendas: Network Analysis” in summer 2017 (EMDA2017). Under the direction of Professor Jonathan Hope and Dr. Ruth Ahnert, this institute will introduce humanities scholars, alt-ac builders, and librarians (both digital and traditional) to an expert visiting faculty—computing specialists, social historians, network analysts, literary historians, linguists, and visualization designers—to model best practices for the design and implementation of quantitative network analysis. EMDA2017 will be an opportunity for 12 scholarly practitioners to consider the ways this approach may be shaping the very nature of early modern research through intensive application and analysis.

Associated Products

Glossary of Network Analysis terms (Web Resource)
Title: Glossary of Network Analysis terms
Author: Sebastian Ahnert
Abstract: Originally compiled in conjunction with the "Early Modern Digital Agendas: Network Analysis" institute in July 2017, the glossary below aims to help those learning how to use network analysis as an approach with common terms. Additions and updates are welcome.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Glossary_of_network_analysis_terms

Networking the Early Stuart Diplomatic Service: An Introduction (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Networking the Early Stuart Diplomatic Service: An Introduction
Author: Thea Lindquist
Abstract: The project focuses on a prosopography of the early Stuart diplomatic service (1603-1649) and networks among its members. The author described how she gathers, structures, analyzes, and visualizes biographical data associated with early Stuart diplomatic representatives. Discovering the patterns and connections in this data can help answer questions related to the increasing professionalization of the diplomatic service, among others. Learning more about factors such as the diplomats’ educational preparation, social status and mobility, career paths, and religious and political networks can provide a fuller and more nuanced understanding of the service’s evolution as an institution, as well as its role in operationalizing English foreign policy in this key period leading up to the Civil War and Interregnum. The project data are drawn from heterogeneous sources. One of the project’s goals is to produce a combined, enhanced data set on early Stuart diplomats to which related projects can readily link via standard identifiers and common data structures. The author presented her on-going project, the current state of her research, and shared preliminary results in this poster session.
Date: 10/19/17
Primary URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M68B9G
Conference Name: 4th Historical Network Research Conference, Turku, Finland

Report from the field: network analysis (Blog Post)
Title: Report from the field: network analysis
Author: Ruth Ahnert
Abstract: In July 2017 the Folger Institute welcomed participants and faculty to the third of its Early Modern Digital Agendas (EMDA) gatherings—an NEH-funded Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities. The EMDA institutes train early modern scholars in digital methods, digital tools, and theoretical frameworks, exposing them to the latest methods and thinking in the field, with faculty drawn from academia and beyond. This is an account from one of the co-directors
Date: 10/10/17
Primary URL: https://collation.folger.edu/2017/10/report-network-analysis/
Blog Title: The Collation: Research and Exploration at the Folger

Finding Early Modern Women’s Agency Through Network Analysis (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Finding Early Modern Women’s Agency Through Network Analysis
Author: Catherine Medici-Thiemann
Author: Tara Wood
Author: Genelle Gertz
Abstract: This workshop features the work of three participants from the Early Modern Digital Agendas: Advanced Topics in Network Analysis institute. See the link for their workshop's abstract.
Date: 6/15/2018
Primary URL: https://cpb-us-west-2-juc1ugur1qwqqqo4.stackpathdns.com/people.uwm.edu/dist/a/440/files/2017/03/37-Medici-Wood-Gertz-1ek6y4t.pdf
Conference Name: Attending to Early Modern Women 2018: Action and Agency (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

Using Multi-Layered Networks to Disclose Books in the Republic of Letters (Article)
Title: Using Multi-Layered Networks to Disclose Books in the Republic of Letters
Author: Ingeborg van Vugt
Abstract: This article highlights the importance of books as dynamic actors within the Republic of Letters by means of multi-layered visualizations of epistolary networks. In the past decade, it has become increasingly common to make use of networks to study shifts in early modern scholarly exchange. Originally, almost all of these studies employed a single-layered network where one node of the graph represents a correspondent, and an edge between a pair of nodes corresponds to a letter exchanged between them. However, reducing the complex society of the Republic of Letters to a network in which actors are connected by one single type suggests a static uniformity that barely takes into account the multi-faced dynamics of epistolary exchange. In addition to letters, the Republic of Letters was tied (and untied) together primarily by means of books: they could foster networks when given as gifts, as well as influence and endanger connections if enlisted on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Therefore, this paper intends to discuss an approach that integrates both letters and books in a unified, dynamic multi-layered network representation. To this end, the epistolary network of the Dutch philologist Nicolaas Heinsius (1620-1680) with the Florentine Medici court serves as a case study to illustrate the applicability of multi-layered networks in correspondence research.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.25517/jhnr.v1i1.7
Access Model: Open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Historical Network Research
Publisher: Université du Luxembourg

Keeping the balance: conflicts and reconciliations in the early modern network (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Keeping the balance: conflicts and reconciliations in the early modern network
Author: Ingeborg van Vugt
Abstract: With this contribution, I discuss how the notion of structural balance in networks can contribute to a greater understanding of the circulation of knowledge and ideas between Catholic Tuscany and the Calvinist Dutch Republic. It questions how scholars between these two opposite societies could maintain a balance between, on the other hand, the desire to circulate knowledge, and on the other, the need to avoid tensions. These tensions ranged from restrictions imposed by the Sant’Uffizio, to scholarly rivalries, jealously and competition. Drawing on insights from Social Network Analysis, this paper explores how structural balance can be used to reason about how fissures in an epistolary network may arise from the dynamics of conflicts, disagreement and antagonism between corresponding scholars. The notion of structural balance offers to capture positive and negative links to understand the tensions between these two forces, which either enables or blocks the flow of information throughout the early modern network. In the context of EMDA2017, with the help of visiting faculty member Sebastian Ahnert, an algorithm was developed to assess the applicability of the structural balance theory in historical research.
Date: 03/23/2018
Conference Name: Renaissance Society of America

Historical Network Analysis: A journey through modelling and exploring early modern correspondence (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Historical Network Analysis: A journey through modelling and exploring early modern correspondence
Abstract: This lecture discusses key elements of network analysis from the perspective of historians, providing insights into the possibilities and limitations this method offers. It is the intent of this lecture to illustrate a journey and learning process in modelling historical networks. After an introduction on the basic terminology and concepts of network analysis, we will discuss how we can transform archival sources in network data. This is not an easy task: archival research often presents us with complex, fragmentary and uncertain data that are hard to reconcile with the required precision of digital technology. To bridge this gap, we will discover how the use of multi-layered networks may provide a powerful outcome to tackle both complexity and fragmentation in archival data. Following that, we will see how we can enrich and quantify our archival based network with data-mining from datasets. By doing so, I will show how various network measurements can highlight the different roles that individual nodes play in a network. In explaining these methods, I will use examples from my own research on early modern correspondence networks. EMDA2017 prepared me to teach this introductory course on network analysis in historical research.
Author: Ingeborg van Vugt
Date: 01/10/2018
Location: Marten-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle (Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung,)

Using Network Analysis to Understand Early Modern Women (Article)
Title: Using Network Analysis to Understand Early Modern Women
Author: Catherine Medici-Thiemann
Abstract: Volume 13.1 (Fall, 2018)
Year: 2018
Primary URL: DOI: 10.1353/emw.2018.0070
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Early Modern Women, An Interdisciplinary Journal

Getting Started in Digital History Workshop: Network Analysis (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Getting Started in Digital History Workshop: Network Analysis
Author: Catherine Medici-Thiemann
Author: Tara S. Wood
Abstract: An introduction for scholars of history hoping to explore the techniques and affordances of network analysis
Date: 01/06/2019
Conference Name: American Historical Society Annual Meeting

Conceptualizing Knowledge Networks: Agents and Patterns of "Flow" (Book Section)
Title: Conceptualizing Knowledge Networks: Agents and Patterns of "Flow"
Author: Rachel Midura
Editor: Paula Findlen
Abstract: Drawing on the concepts of advanced network analysis, this volume afterword discusses the concept of "flow" as it affects agents and patterns, reflecting on the possible applications of network metrics to the historical case studies treated by the authors, and what their work can contribute to our thinking about network analysis in turn.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://www.routledge.com/Empires-of-Knowledge-Scientific-Networks-in-the-Early-Modern-World/Findlen/p/book/9781138207134
Access Model: Purchase
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: Empires of Knowledge: Scientific Networks in the Early Modern World
ISBN: 978-1138207134

Early Modern Mobility: Knowledge, Communication, and Transportation, 1500-1800 (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Early Modern Mobility: Knowledge, Communication, and Transportation, 1500-1800
Author: Rachel Midura
Abstract: Research team received $50,000 grant from The UPS Endowment Fund for Transportation, Logistics and Urban Issues or multi-university research and curriculum development. The history of roads and the history of postal systems are often invisible elements of the past because they seem so obvious. Roads lead somewhere but not everywhere; they make local, regional, and long-distance communities, economies, systems of governance, and human mobility possible. Yet we do not often think that they have a history. Similarly, despite the existence of postal museums in different parts of the world, including the National Postal Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., most people never contemplate how postal systems came into being. In fact, the creation and control of infrastructure providing reliable delivery of mail is a key means of fostering and controlling society across distance. It requires logistical planning, an understanding of how people and things move through space and the rate at which they can travel by various means of transportation. During the early modern period (1500-1800), individuals and communities experienced dramatic changes in communication and transportation, establishing practices, institutions, and infrastructure that opened up new political and economic possibilities, and changed the way people understood the world.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://emmobility.github.io/emm_site/related/description.html
Audience: Undergraduate

Mapping the Grand Tour: Digital Methods for Historical Data (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Mapping the Grand Tour: Digital Methods for Historical Data
Author: Rachel Midura
Abstract: Co-design and teach digital humanities course with Prof. Giovanna Ceserani with grants from Stanford Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning and Department for Languages and Comparative Literature
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?view=catalog&filter-coursestatus-Active=on&q=CLASSICS%20115:%20Mapping%20the%20Grand%20Tour:%20Digital%20Methods%20for%20Historical%20Data&academicYear=20182019
Audience: Undergraduate

Mapping the Post: Networks of Published Postal Itineraries, 1545-1684 (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Mapping the Post: Networks of Published Postal Itineraries, 1545-1684
Author: Rachel Midura
Abstract: A paper presented at the German Historical Institute, Washington D.C., October 2018
Date: 10/25/2018
Primary URL: https://www.ghi-dc.org/events-conferences/event-history/2018/conferences/3rd-ghi-digital-humanities-and-digital-history-conf.html?L=0
Conference Name: Reconstructing Historical Networks Digitally Conference

“British Travelers in Italy in the Eighteenth Century” (Web Resource)
Title: “British Travelers in Italy in the Eighteenth Century”
Author: Rachel Midura
Author: Giovanna Ceserani
Abstract: Section IV of The Grand Tour Explorer (2019) (Forthcoming) which is a Digital volume with contributions from past Digitizing the Grand Tour workshop participants as well as pedagogical materials to accompany the Grand Tour Explorer platform
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://grandtour.stanford.edu/

What ish my network? Introducing MACMORRIS: Digitising cultural activity and collaborative networks in early modern Ireland (Article)
Title: What ish my network? Introducing MACMORRIS: Digitising cultural activity and collaborative networks in early modern Ireland
Author: David Baker
Author: Willy Maley
Author: Patricia Palmer
Abstract: Early modern Ireland is one of the most dynamic literary and political spaces in Renaissance Europe. It is the site of vibrant writing in English, Irish, and Latin and of translation from Latin, Spanish, and Italian into English and Irish. While it has received extensive critical attention from historicists, cultural materialists, feminists, and new-British historians over the past three decades, their focus has been the colonial context of the English Renaissance (and writers like Edmund Spenser) rather than the Gaelic and Old English cultures and communities thrown into crisis by the Tudor conquest (ignoring, thereby, writers like, say, Eochaidh Ó hEoghusa or Richard Stanihurst). MACMORRIS is a digital-humanities project designed to correct that lopsided focus by mapping cultural activity across the island in all languages. Working in an interdisciplinary and comparative framework, it will identify every significant cultural figure working in Ireland between, roughly, 1569 and 1641 and trace their nodal points and networks.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12496
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Literature Compass
Publisher: Wiley Online Library

Using the Methods of Our Manuscripts: Networking and Early Modern Recipe Collaborations (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Using the Methods of Our Manuscripts: Networking and Early Modern Recipe Collaborations
Author: Melissa Schultheis
Author: Hillary Nunn
Abstract: The Wellcome Library manuscript MS 7113 epitomizes the promise of working with recipe books to reconstruct early modern social networks. Owned by Lady Anne Fanshawe and later inherited by her daughter, MS 7113 shows the effects of marriages, politics, and social upheavals on early modern domestic life, and its yet-unstudied marginal notations and recipes written in English and Spanish bear the influence of Lady Anne’s travels to France, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. As these notations often indicate who donated recipes to the household and as particular dishes such as “seviche” and “Spanish Bacon” specify recipe and ingredient location, MS 7113 hints at both the social networks within which the Fanshawes operated as well as the way English households engaged with foreign cookery and medicine. This presentation will trace intersections between Lady Anne’s travels and recipe collecting habits while also demonstrating how today's collaborative methods are bringing to light the networks that created early modern manuscript recipe collections. Taking MS 7113 as our model, we will also show how collaborations like The Early Modern Recipes Online Collective and the Herbal History Research Network allow scholars from disparate campuses to map similarly long-distance relationships that influence domestic practice.
Date: 01/13/2018
Conference Name: Modern Language Association

Translation and print networks in seventeenth-century Britain: from catalogue entries to digital visualizations (Article)
Title: Translation and print networks in seventeenth-century Britain: from catalogue entries to digital visualizations
Author: Marie-Alice Belle
Author: Marie-France Guénette
Abstract: with datasets to be published on companion website
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.itergateway.org/resources/new-technologies-and-renaissance-studies
Format: Journal
Format: Other
Periodical Title: New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Publisher: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

"Disclose reading" and Women's Agency in Seventeenth-Century Translation and Print Networks (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: "Disclose reading" and Women's Agency in Seventeenth-Century Translation and Print Networks
Author: Marie-Alice Belle
Abstract: forthcoming
Date: 03/19/2019
Conference Name: Renaissance Society of America

Network Narratives (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Network Narratives
Author: Jillian Linster
Abstract: This honors seminar course at the University of South Dakota leads students through an introduction to network analysis in the humanities, with a focus on the plethora of exciting and accessible new tools for network analysis that have been developed in recent years. Network Narratives will expose students to theories about and approaches for conducting network analysis in a variety of fields; guide them in the basic use of some of the tools available online for identifying, visualizing, and analyzing networks; and foster discussion and interpretation of the role and impact of networks in our academic, professional, and personal lives. Major assignments include data cleaning and data visualization exercises and an essay on network analysis.
Year: 2019
Audience: Undergraduate

Networks of Print, Patronage, and Religion in the Early Modern Print Trade (Book)
Title: Networks of Print, Patronage, and Religion in the Early Modern Print Trade
Author: Rebecca Emmett
Abstract: Robert Waldegrave, the publisher of the first radical Martin Marprelate tracts in 1588 has been assumed by scholars to be a radical puritan, committed to the reform movement. A minor stationer in London, his involvement with the clandestine Marprelate press forced him into exile, yet he found himself in great demand on his arrival in Scotland in 1589, becoming the printer of choice for the Church of Scotland, and subsequently, the Royal Printer of James VI. This book explores his career in depth and offers a new interpretation of his life and career which situates him within a wider network of printers and publishers in England and Scotland, exploring how his varied career reflects the nature of the different print trades he worked within. By exploring his professional network, it will be shown that rather than Waldegrave, it is his previously unrecognised and unstudied collaborators, including Thomas Man, who deserve to be included in discussions of puritan print. Waldegrave instead offers us a fascinating insight into the precarious nature of the print trade for relatively minor stationers in England, and the wealth of opportunities available to foreign stationers in Scotland.
Year: 2020
Publisher: Routledge
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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