Across the Trope-Verse: Exploring Digital Humanities

Across the Trope-Verse: Exploring Digital Humanities

by | Apr 15, 2024 | Essay, Experiences

 

[Figure 1] The “Eldritch Abomination” that is the TV Tropes dataset. Tv Tropes is a website that categorizes themes and plot devices across media, through which users can explore different tropes as well as actively contribute with their own insights.

Joining JRAAS has instilled in me a newfound curiosity to delve into Digital Humanities projects that speak to my interests and, in my research, I have found “TV Tropes-The Weird Geometry of the Internet” developed by Elijah Meeks, a data visualization expert, at Stanford University. The project aims to create visual network representations, to illustrate connections between different tropes, recurring plot devices, and works. By “mapping” out how tropes are linked to works and how the latter are linked through shared tropes, the aim is to analyze the thematic and narrative structures present in different media.

The challenge is in the difficulty to allow users an interactive approach, precisely because of the data’s large dimensions, but here is an attempt made of up of the 148 most central indices, works and tropes using the gexfjs library. Because of TV Tropes’s vast network, Meeks turns to other methods to better explore and interpret  data, such as modularity, allowing us to identify specific interconnected trope “communities’ ‘.

This way, Meeks divides these communities into “neighborhoods” such as Video Games (Green) – originally “Overcompensation”– so think of works that give the audience exactly what the title suggests like Buffy, the Vampire Slayer or Lampshade (Teal) – Originally “A Very TV Tropes Movie”,  encapsulating medium awareness. Friends often did this- in  Season 6, Episode 8, “The One with Ross’s Teeth”, the cold open features the One Hour Work-Week trope, where the characters complain about how their bosses don’t seem to like them and Joey (Matt Leblanc) retorts with “Maybe it’s because you’re in a coffee shop at 11:30 on a Wednesday morning?”.

[Figure 2] Neighborhood 5 – Lampshade Hanging – “A Very TV Tropes Movie”. List of the members of the community here.

Through these neighborhoods, Meeks ranks works on TV Tropes based on their thematic makeup and identifies the 50 most similar works based on shared tropes and percentages indicating their degree of similarity. For instance, I was amazed to find that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein apparently shares more tropes with the Planet of the Apes– 10 in total- than with the Bride of Frankenstein film- 6 tropes in total. As seen in Figure 2, the great majority of shared tropes and links fall into Id (Purple); Supernatural (Blue); Meta (Yellow) and Traditional (Red) categories.

[Figure 3] Similarities between Frankenstein (1818) and the top 50 most similar works based on shared tropes. Click here to see the spreadsheet.

It’s peculiar results like these that are worth exploring more in depth: questioning just how different narrative motifs “travel” across multiple genres. Research like this invites further questions like how can the analysis of shared tropes inform us of the evolution of storytelling across different forms of media over time or to what extent does fan culture influence trope categorization.

As someone who consumes multiple forms of media, everything from literature and cinema to video-games, I was drawn to this fascinating approach to tropes,  allowing me to explore connections across media I wouldn’t otherwise have ever thought about.

Meet the new team

by | Apr 3, 2024 | Experiences

It’s April in Porto. It’s cold and it’s raining cats and dogs. At CETAPS, a group of junior researchers in Anglo-American Studies is organizing and streamlining a few online projects related to it. Both the Alimentopia project – an archive for a multidisciplinary research project on utopian visions of the future conditions of food production and consumption – and the ARUS Digital Repository – a major collection of critical bibliography on utopian studies originally compiled by Lyman Tower Sargent – are being worked on. There is a lot to be done, but there is a team of four young master’s students between the ages of 23 and 25 hammering away at it. Below, we present to you the members of this Fantastic Four.

Joana Pinela is currently a second year student on the Anglo-American Studies (AAS) Master’s Program and she is writing a thesis on the poetry of Diane Di Prima. She took a bachelor’s degree in Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Porto and she has been a volunteer English teacher, teaching mostly adults. She is especially passionate about North-American literature.

Joel Faustino is a first year student at the AAS Master’s Program. He has a bachelor’s degree in Translation (German and English) from the University of Porto and has worked as a teacher in public and private schools in Portugal. He is fascinated by aesthetics and North-American history.

Lile Kobaliani is from Georgia and is in her first year of the AAS Master’s Program. She studied English Language and Literature at LCC International University at Klaipėda, Lithuania. She has worked as a writer before, and has a passion for literature and cinema.

Raquel Souza is from Brazil and she is taking her first year in the AAS Master’s Program. She studied journalism at Universidade Lusófona do Porto, and has done volunteer English teaching work as well. Despite not having studied literature, she came to her master’s because she is interested in North-American culture and how it relates to cinema.

These will be the people who will contribute to updating the Digital Lab blog for the foreseeable future. We are hoping we can bring something new to it.

 

My experience at the CETAPS Digital Lab

by | Jan 29, 2024 | Experiences

During an almost one-year hiatus between my Bachelor’s degree, and a Masters, the opportunity arose to collaborate on a project titled “Anglophone Travellers in Portugal”, at the CETAPS Digital Lab.

The project consisted of exploring pre-existing categories and contents belonging to works related to travels made in Portugal, written by Anglophone explorers during the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.

Exploring Portugal through their lens, being able to discover what fascinated them at the time, and which geographical points they travelled to was quite interesting.

Most of the data was collected into two databases, which I extensively worked with and researched on. Learning how to work with the information collected from these works throughout several decades turned into one of my longest, yet most rewarding projects I have ever contributed towards.

With the help of my advisor, Luciano Moreira, I learnt how to work with the databases in “R” programming, creating interactive maps of Portugal and the world, so that we could visualize and trace the most sought travel routes used by those anglophone travellers between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.

If someone would have told me before I started at CETAPS that I would one day be able to apply programming onto projects related to literature, I would have thought that the idea was funny, but now I understand how useful it can be.

By embarking on this project, I gained a deeper understanding of Digital Humanities, learning new concepts and discovering very compelling debates about topics within social sciences. I was also able to work with impeccable colleagues, each with their own fascinating and engaging backgrounds. Although my official position within the Digital Lab was as a collaborator, I felt very integrated in the group, and I hope I will still be of help, whenever I am needed.

This time has also helped me decide what it is I actually want to do in the future, as I was unsure if I wanted to either pursue a Masters in Literature, or try something outside of my comfort zone. I am very glad to say I ended up going with my second option, as I decided that in a society that is becoming more and more “digital”, my interests lie within how communication will be affected by this.

For these reasons, I decided to enroll (and ended up being accepted) into a Master’s programme in Communication, Culture and Technologies of Information at the ISCTE University (University Institute of Lisbon), which will begin in September (https://www.iscte-iul.pt/course/13/master-msc-in-communication-culture-and-information-technology ).

Even though departures are sad, I am grateful I had this time to evolve academically, and that I was able to work in a challenging and excellent environment.

 

 

Research Opportunities – until February 1st, 2024

by | Jan 19, 2024 | Research Opportunities

One (1) Research grant (BI) for a PhD student enrolled in the exercise of scientific research activities, within the scope of the «Digital Laboratory» project taking place at CETAPS. Scientific Field: Digital Media, Multimedia, Communication Sciences. Admission Requirements: All individuals holding the following requirements may apply for this scholarship, pending on the submission of the corresponding documents:

  1. Master’s degree completed in one of the scientific areas relevant to the project or any related areas *;
  2. Be a student enrolled in a PhD from a higher education institution; or hold a doctoral degree and be enrolled in a non-degree course integrated in an educational project of a higher education institution, developed in connection with one or more R&D units, which must be certified and proven before the celebration of the contract;
  3. Language skills in the English language (level B2 referring to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, as a minimum);
  4. Proven research skills in the scientific areas relevant to the project.

Five (5) research grant (BI) for students enrolled in a Master’s Degree for the exercise of scientific research activities within the scope of the project “Junior Researchers in Anglo-American Studies” taking place at CETAPS. Scientific Field: Humanities and Social Sciences. Admission Requirements: All individuals fitting the following requirements may apply for this scholarship, pending on the submission of the corresponding documents:

  1. Degree completed in a scientific area relevant to the scholarship or related areas (to be proven before the act of contracting);
  2. Be a student enrolled in a master’s degree from a higher education institution (to be proven before the act of contracting).

One (1) Research Initiation Grant (BII) to carry out R&D activities within the scope of the “Digital Laboratory” project taking place at CETAPS Scientific Field(s): Digital Media, Multimedia, Computing, Information Science, Data Science. Admission requirements All individuals of legal age who have the following documented requirements can apply for this scholarship:

  1. Be enrolled in a bachelor’s degree or in the 180 credits corresponding to the first six curricular semesters of work of a master’s degree integrated in one of the scientific fields relevant to this project or related fields (requirement to be proven until the act of hiring);
  2. Have not previously benefited from a research grant directly or indirectly funded by FCT.

One (1) Research Initiation Grant (BII) to carry out R&D activities within the scope of the “Digital Laboratory” project taking place at CETAPS Scientific Field(s): Communication Sciences, Digital Media, Multimedia. Admission requirements All individuals of legal age who have the following documented requirements can apply for this scholarship:

  1. Be enrolled in a bachelor’s degree course or in the 180 credits corresponding to the first six curricular semesters of work of a master’s degree integrated in one of the scientific fields of this project or related fields (requirement to be proven until the act of contracting);
  2. Have not previously benefited from a research grant directly or indirectly funded by FCT.
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