Local Mining Culture and Digital Humanities MethodologiesMain MenuThe Hearl Maxwell Collection and Mining in the United StatesA overview of the Maxwell Collection, with in introduction into the exhibit.Why does it matter?A defense of the exhibit, and its thesis into the entirety of the research.Effects of World War IA description of the economy that followed the end of WW I and the difficulties that were faced.Corpus Text AnalysisWherein the body text is analyzed and patterns begin to develop.Issues on the National LevelA description and analysis of the issues facing the local workers from the national level.Concern for the WorkersA description and list of concerns for safety from District 14.Constitution for Work EnvironmentA description and analysis of the Constitution put in place in District 14, and the significance thereof.TimelineA Timeline of events starting from the mine worker's strikes to the eventual donation of the Hearl Maxwell Collection to Pittsburg State UniversityWhy does it matter? -- RevisitedWherein the arguments of the rest of the exhibit are brought together and put together into a functioning thesis.GalleryA gallery of the media used within the exhibit.Tyler Breedlovea71cc6498b6d19eafe211d1b0c73c9f02582536b
Maxwell Collection Word Cloud
12016-05-02T05:02:36-07:00Tyler Breedlovea71cc6498b6d19eafe211d1b0c73c9f02582536b96271A word cloud form of word frequencies in the Maxwell Hearl Collection.plain2016-05-02T05:02:37-07:00Tyler Breedlovea71cc6498b6d19eafe211d1b0c73c9f02582536b
This page is referenced by:
12016-05-02T06:18:43-07:00Corpus Text Analysis14Wherein the body text is analyzed and patterns begin to develop.plain2016-05-22T12:51:10-07:00The analysis of the collection begins with an overview of the text and the overall usage of vocabulary throughout the collection. This method of study originates out of the concept of Digital Humanities, and one such focus of this field is the concept of distant reading. Distant reading allows for a larger analysis of a work or series of items. As discussed by David Oberhelman, on page 59 of his book Distant Reading, Computational Stylistics, and Corpus Linguistics: "He [Franco Moretti] changes the critical lens by rejecting the microscopic close reading of a single text and, instead, regards very large constellations of many literary works, which he describes a 'planetary system,' requiring a macroscopic approach."
This exhibit plans the same approach to the Maxwell Collection as Oberhelman discusses. Several visual aids will be used, and the first step of this exhibit is to analyze the vocabulary used as a framework for the rest of the exhibit. As such, the first graph is a word cloud, which shows the most frequently used words as larger on the cloud.
The first impact of the word cloud shows a heavy emphasis on words that orientate around Kansas and the interactions with the larger governmental officials. The documents emphasize words like "Kansas" and "union." While it may seem self-explanatory, the documents also demonstrate a trend within the words when analyzed over the course of the corpus. The usage of words changed from larger scoping words into more local words, and for a extremely important reason.
Towards the beginning (chronologically) of the collection, the focus of the vocabulary is on the word "union." It parallels with the large amounts of strikes and rebellions that were occurring during the 1919-1922 period. An excerpt from the book Strike, by Jeremy Brecher, claims that "the government and even the unions in often pitched battles involving guns, dynamite, and on one occasion a makeshift air force".
After this focus on the union, which coincides with the union strikes, the focus shifts back onto Kansas as the state in general. The usage of district shoots up quickly after "union" dies down as well, which coincides with the turn of thought from the outward union concern to the inward state concerns.
An argument can be made that this focus arose from a rejection from outwardly governmental society down onto the local level.
12016-05-04T02:13:52-07:00Gallery4A gallery of the media used within the exhibit.structured_gallery2016-05-04T03:43:00-07:00