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Dissertation Information for Kari Kraus

NAME:
- Kari Kraus

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- English

SCHOOL:
- University of Rochester (USA) (2006)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: Conjectural criticism: Computing past and future texts

Abstract: Broadly conceived, this dissertation re-imagines the role of conjecture in textual scholarship at a time when computers are increasingly pressed into service as tools of reconstruction and forecasting. Examples of conjecture include the recovery of lost readings in classical texts and the computational modeling of the evolution of a literary work or the descent of a natural language. Conjectural criticism is thus concerned with issues of transmission, transformation, and prediction. It has ancient parallels in divination and modern parallels in the comparative methods of historical linguistics and evolutionary biology. It also stands in contradistinction to current practices of archival or documentary reading, which foreground the material specificity of texts. The object of conjecture is notional rather than empirical; possible rather than demonstrable; counterfactual rather than real. This subjunctive mode is not antithetical to the humanities, but central to it. Whether it is a student of the ancient Near East deciphering a fragmented cuneiform tablet or a musician speculatively completing Bach's unfinished final fugue or a literary scholar using advanced 3D computer modeling to virtually restore a badly damaged manuscript, the impulse in each instance--vital and paradoxical--is to go beyond purely documentary states of objects.

The dissertation develops a computational model of textuality, one that better supports conjectural reasoning, as a counterweight to the pictorial model of textuality that now predominates. "Computation" is here broadly understood to mean the manipulation of discrete units of information, which, in the case of language, entails the grammatical processing of strings rather than the mathematical calculation of numbers to create puns, anagrams, word ladders, and other word games. A dissertation thus proposes that a textual scholar endeavoring to recover a prior version of a text, a diviner attempting to decipher an oracle by signs, and a poet exploiting the combinatorial play of language collectively draw on the same library of semiotic operations, which are amenable to algorithmic expression and simulation.

The intended audience for the work includes textual scholars, specialists in the digital humanities and new media, and others interested in the technology of the written word and the emerging field of biohumanities.

MPACT Scores for Kari Kraus

A = 0
C = 2
A+C = 2
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2014-07-23 15:19:42

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Students under Kari Kraus

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- Rachael Leigh Bradley - University of Maryland (2009)
- Dana Rotman - University of Maryland (2013)