Dissertation Information for Kari KrausNAME:
DEGREE:
DISCIPLINE:
SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: 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. |
MPACT Scores for Kari KrausA = 0 Advisors and Advisees Graphgenerating graph, please reload |
Students under Kari Kraus
ADVISEES:
- None
COMMITTEESHIPS:
- Rachael Leigh Bradley - University of Maryland (2009)
- Dana Rotman - University of Maryland (2013)