Salve munde: Philology at the Command Line (or an “exploratory” approach to Latin)

Abstract for workshop given at Trinity University

Abstract

Where should Latinists get started with computational analysis of literary texts? Which programming language? Which formats? Which tools? In this talk, discussing my latest project Exploratory Philology, I argue that the place to start is with the (digitized) texts themselves. Building on Nick Montfort’s exploratory paradigm of learning “how to think with computation” in the humanities, I show how working through a series of constrained philological problems—anything from counting color terms to searching for acrostics to generating random text—can at the same time help us use code to learn about the languages and to use the languages to help us learn to code. The workshop will give participants (no prior experience necessary!) the opportunity to read, write, and revise Python scripts to manipulate Latin texts and discover new things about them.