The Longue Durée According to Wikipedia: An Experiment in Digital Historiography

Wikipedia exists in 356 languages, each of which has its own orientation to the past. Different languages give different accounts of who invented air travel and when; they also differently frame the history of ideology, objects, or sport. World history has never previously had the tools to structurally compare these points of view before, but data mining makes it possible to compare chronology, event, and actors across the traditions of the world. Professor Jo Guldi will present from work in progress from this exciting collaboration, the first to bring together historians, philosophers, and data scientists to ask how different traditions narrativize time.

Because we all live in an era of climate change, Jo Guldi mostly thinks in terms of the history of land and water: who got evicted; who controlled the water; how land was mapped, owned, connected and used, and what stories we tell about those displacements that have shaped the world that came after. She is also a scholar of history who uses machine learning, statistics and other big-data methods to approach the traditional concerns of the humanities. Before joining Emory University, Guldi  served as associate professor of history at Southern Methodist University and was also previously Hans Rothfels assistant professor of history at Brown.

• For in-person attendees, light refreshments and drinks will be provided.
• For online attendees, the event will be livestreamed on ASU Live.

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