Taylohr Brown Walter Quiller Diamond Jenkins Dr. Seretha Williams TEXT MINING AND DIGITAL HUMANITIES: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY

 Text mining: searching through text for syntactic and/or thematic patterns that may yield statistics that can support literary analysis.  Digitization of authors’ works for increased accessibility and easier comparison.  Text mining can supplement literary analysis of African American literature, supporting new or previously established themes and raising new research questions. INTRODUCTION

 Methodology  Analysis of Data  Analysis of Results  Conclusions OVERVIEW OF PRESENTATION

POETS WORKS EXAMINED

HYPOTHESIS We developed an hypothesis to determine if there is a distinctive genre of African American poetry. To confirm or deny this claim we developed three categories that would help us to distinguish the characteristics that would support our claim, those categories were memory, identity and music.

 Black identity often defined by those who are not black.  Double-consciousness.  Art may provide a means for black people to determine their complex, fluid identity without interference from non-whites. IDENTITY

 Black art can be informed by white perspectives (e.g. patronage).  The destruction of double- consciousness through art makes it useful in defining blackness. IDENTITY (CONT’D)

African/Africa bird black blue brother(s)/brethren color community congregation culture our own people person dark different/difference double family free group human I/I am/I be you love race/racial root(s) IDENTITY (CONT’D)

 Collective consciousness among marginalized groups.  Slavery, European imperialism, maltreatment.  “Total history of black people” (Neal 647). MEMORY

Africa African back bastard bit blacks blood blues body bond Bondage colored MEMORY (CONT’D) Congo cotton crop death deliver escape house iron bit Jim Crow lynching/lynch River sugar

 Music provides an avenue for expression and opens the opportunity for black people to culturally define themselves. MUSIC

blow blues cabaret chariot child club cool dance/dancer devil drum(s) God water MUSIC whisper shine silent/silence song/sing yell/shout moan mother mourn laugh/laughter listen lord

RELATIVE FREQUENCIES BLACKLOVENAME Alice Walker Gwendolyn Brooks Langston Hughes Margaret Walker Maya Angelou

RAW FREQUENCIES BLACKLOVENAME Alice Walker Gwendolyn Brooks15254 Langston Hughes Margaret Walker Maya Angelou33246

Key Words# of times occurredPercentage BLACK297297/94,527 =.31% LOVE268.28% NAME60.06% DEATH90.1% BLOOD73.08% HOUSE65.07% SING58.06% BLUES52.06% SHOUT15.02% ANALYSIS

CONCLUSIONS  Heavy usage of words related to oppression (e.g. blood, death).  Words relating to blackness occur frequently; this reveals the importance of race insofar as the search for identity.  Langston Hughes and Margaret Walker draw upon the trope of song more heavily than the other poets. This usage attests to their reliance on the vernacular and oral tradition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Angelou, Maya. The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou. New York: Random House Print. B., Du Bois W. E., Henry Louis Gates, and Terri Hume. Oliver. The Souls of Black Folk: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.Print. Brooks, Gwendolyn. The Blacks. Chicago: Third World Press, Print. Gates, Henry Louis. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the "racial" Self. New York: Oxford University Press, Print. Hughes, Langston. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York: Vintage, Print. Schulz, David A. Coming up Black; Patterns of Ghetto Socialization. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Print. Thompson, Daniel C. Sociology of the Black Experience. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, Print. Walker, Alice. Collected Poems: Her Blue Body Everything We Know - Earthling Poems London, England: Phoenix, Orion, Print. Walker, Margaret. This is My Century, New and Collected Poems. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, Print.