7 thoughts on ““Close” and “Distant” Reading”

1. The American Periodical Series Online was at once intriguing and extremely frustrating. It took a while to hone a good technique for searching, but even after I felt like I had come close to replicating the search parameters Dr. Lasser had used, I was unable to come up with the same patterns that she found or even articles that predominantly pertained to the specific subjects that she described. Initially I tried using the advanced search option and combined ‘anti-slavery’ with the search terms ‘ravish or amalgamate’ and limited the time frame to 1820-1860. I got the most hits (22) from the 1840’s, followed by 20 from the 1850’s and 18 from the 1830’s. I did a few other advanced searches using slightly different terms and found the same basic pattern, which conflicted with Lasser’s findings that anti-slavery documents pertaining to sex flourished primarily during the late 1830’s. I then decided to try to more closely follow what Lasser might have done and switched over to the command line form of searching and, based on what she had written about her process in the appendix and footnotes, searched the following:

   TI(Abolitionist Record of the New England Anti—Slavery Society OR African Repository OR Anti-Slavery Reporter OR Anti-Slavery Examiner OR Anti-Slavery Record OR Biblical Repertory OR Friend; a Religious and Literary Journal OR Genius of Universal Emancipation OR Harbinger, Devoted to Social and Political Progress Independent OR Liberator OR Liberty Bell OR Massachusetts Quarterly Review OR Methodist Magazine OR National Era OR New York Evangelist OR Philanthropist OR Western Messenger Devoted to Religion OR Zion’s Herald) AND (rape OR ravish OR amalgamation OR adultery OR licen*) AND (*slave OR slave*) AND (United States OR America) AND YR(1800-1861)

   The results of this search corroborated my previous findings that the terms were most frequently used in anti-slavery publications in the 1840’s. However, within the pool of articles that my search found I was unable to find any voyeuristic accounts of sexuality in the South, although I did locate an interesting articles condemning ‘negro drivers’ and an account by William Lloyd Garrison that was referenced in the Walters reading in which Garrison argues with a slaveholder on the topic of amalgamation. I also noticed that a lot of unrelated articles were still making it through the search. With more time it might be possible to replicate Lasser’s results by searching each of the anti-slavery periodicals individually and compiling the results.

   The utility of a distant reading is somewhat limited by the narrative that has to be constructed around it. I found it interesting that Lasser did not immediately present her findings from the distant reading but instead created an explanation that relied on textual examples and images from anti-slavery newspapers, and then used the distant reading information to supplement these findings. This seemed like an appropriate use of a distant reading because arbitrary factors such as search terms can make it a somewhat fickle source of information. The utility of distant reading thus seems limited to identifying vague trends or historical questions rather than identifying the fundamental elements of an article or a group of articles. I think Lasser recognizes this in the way that her article is constructed. The most striking difference between Walters and Lasser is not Lasser’s use of distant reading but rather the different explanations that they offer for a similar observation. Walter’s article increasingly turns to delving into the mindset of American reformers and explores the plethora of sometimes contradictory arguments arrayed by the abolitionists regarding sexuality. He definitely falls into the camp of historians that Huston indicted in his article on the experiential basis of abolitionism, writing, “The erotic South, like the inhuman and exploitative North of proslavery propaganda, was less a real place than an organizing principle, a culturally planted reference point measuring the dreadful rush of antebellum change.” Lasser mainly explains the changes in the use of voyeuristic sexual arguments in terms of political exigencies. She explains the decline of the use of pornographic indictments of the south in terms of the fracturing of the Immediatist movement and the changing roles of women within it. The important differences in their arguments are predicated on evidence from close readings or from general narratives that the authors employ rather than the type of evidence that they use.

2. I had some trouble using the advanced search on American Periodical Series Online. I couldn’t get it to search the key words exactly the way that I wanted them searched (using and, or, truncations, etc.). I figured out how to use the search well enough to complete the assignment, but I have not quite worked out all the kinks.

   I found an article entitled Moral Reform from the Liberator in 1840 using the search criteria that Lasser used. This article fit in very well with the trend that Lasser described in her article. It emphasized the power masters had over their slaves and how this leads to their sexual dominance saying, “Having unlimited dominion over their female captives, the temptation to commit lewdness is, ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, irresistible”. The language the article uses is shocking. Slaveholders are described as “whoremongers” and “adulterers”. It also comments that at the time women were major contributors to the abolitionist movement. Additionally at the conclusion it asked for support and donations for the “Golden Rule” newsletter thus encouraging mobilization.

   Lasser focuses more on the transition away from voyeurism than Walters. Lasser used distant reading to support her claim that sexual voyeurism was less common in abolitionist literature after 1840. This is important for the article, because Lasser must convincingly show that this happened, before she can explain why it occurred. However distant reading does not explain the reason for this trend which is a major component of Lasser’s article. Walters focuses more on the complexities of the abolitionists’ views on power and passion. He does not use distant reading in his article, however I think this is fine because he is not examining a change over time. Overall I believe that distant reading is valuable as a supplement for close reading but can’t be used a substitute.

3. The American Periodical Series Online is an excellent resource; however, despite its wealth of information, I was not able to reproduce the same results as Lasser. She writes that the rhetoric of sexual language, or voyeuristic abolitionism, was most prominent during the 1830s. In my search for documents with words like licentiousness, rape, adultery, amalgamation, and slave, I found that more of these documents were published in the 1840s than in the preceding decade. I also encountered difficulty each time I added an additional word to my search. Not every document that appeared would apply to Lasser’s theory on voyeuristic abolitionism. In one search I found a document that did not use the words in a sexualized way. The article, appearing in The Liberator in 1840, reported that a black person’s testimony would not be considered when a white person committed a crime, such as adultery, rape, or robbery. I was somewhat successful in my search for sexualized language in abolitionist pieces, but I would need to spend more time refining my search in order to find results similar to Lasser.

   For the second task I attempted to find an article using the same criteria that Lasser used to find articles. I did find one, “The Brand of Ignominy” from the New York Evangelist, which met some of Lasser’s terms; however, I refined my search by omitting some of her recommended search words. The article ultimately fit within Lasser’s theory, as it seemed to be expressing voyeuristic abolitionism: the slaveholder in the position of tyrant, succumbing to his passions, and the female slave as victim of his sexual abuse.

   Both Walters and Lasser believe that sexuality of the Southern slaveholder played a crucial role in the development of the anti-slavery movement, especially with the involvement of women. Walters used the “close” reading method in order to analyze primary sources. Throughout the article he references leading abolitionists, quoting them about the relationship between master and slave and how this relationship was tainting American society. Lasser, however, takes a different approach: she performs a “distant” reading of primary sources. She theorizes that the country went through a period when highly sexualized language appeared in periodicals and pamphlets in order to address slavery. Lasser analyzed this theory by using the American Periodicals Series and finding the frequency of certain language. This method was a very systematic way to find how often people were talking about slavery using a sexualized rhetoric. Despite Lasser’s seemingly scientific methods, there is still possible room for error. Searching for single words might not be the most accurate method of research, as this method does not consider context or meaning within the article; thus the occurrence of a word may not indicate a reference to a voyeuristic view of slavery. In contrast, Walters gives evidence in the form of sentences, instead of single words. Ultimately, Walters shows that abolitionists in the 1830s believed that the slaveholder had to conquer his own passions so that American society could conquer the South’s barbarism; the way to accomplish both of these goals was to abolish slavery. Distant reading of a source can provide an overview of many sources; however, close reading allows the historian to make the results specifically align with his or her theories and give even more direct evidence.

4. Lasser must have had quite a bit of patience when dealing with the American Periodical Series Online. While I was able to eventually replicate her search parameters, I found it took much more time than it would have on a similar database like America’s Historical Newspapers. When I did manage to search the periodicals Lasser listed in the appendix, I still was not able to replicate her results.

   Although there was certainly an upswing in utilization of sexualized words in relation to slavery after 1831, that increase seems to have only gone along with the upswing in anti-slavery writing in general. I was unable to find an example of the “almost pornographically voyeuristic” accounts that evidently characterized the period. What I did find focused on crimes of murder and arson as much as they did adultery and rape. Words related to sexuality seemed to have similar frequency in both the 1830s and the 1840s, but databases like this probably add information and search functions over time.

   For this reason, I find that Walter’s close reading lends more of a confidence that she has done thorough research and understands what specific abolitionists were thinking throughout the decades. Although Lasser’s search created some interesting results, I find that they are comparatively lacking in depth. To me, close reading lends more confidence in the historian’s research than distant reading alone.

5. I was able to use the American Periodical Series to find a few related articles, as well as a few interesting articles that were not so closely related. However, I had trouble using it well enough to detect any obvious patterns, which I think was due to both to the sheer magnitude of articles published on the subject of slavery during this time period as well as the fact that any certain word can be used in a variety of different ways.

   I started out with general searches that included the whole time period and basic word associations. This was actually moderately successful, as I was able to find several interesting articles directly related to the subject that Lasser was studying, including one from The Liberator. Also useful was that I found several semi-related articles that I was not specifically looking for, but were actually interesting and relevant to the topic at hand, for example, an article talking about the redefining of the role of women in terms of the new wave of Christianity. Although I found several articles that could be useful as specific examples, I found this method to highly ineffective in terms of finding overarching trends because it’s extremely time-consuming and a lot of unrelated articles come up.

   So I moved from a general search to an advanced search, targeting specific publications and time periods. I actually found this to be less helpful because there were still lots of unrelated articles, but this time in a smaller pool of articles. I still was hindered by the issue that word associations aren’t really an accurate predictor of what an article is actually about. I used one of the same searches that Lasser used which was the association between the word “slave” and the word “rape.” This turned up a lot of articles, but virtually none of them had anything to do with what I was actually looking for. Interestingly, the majority of these articles were referencing slaves as the perpetrators of rape rather than the victims. I’m not sure what this means, but it didn’t really seem to have anything to do with Lasser’s findings.

   I think that a big advantage of distant reading is that it allows for quantitative analysis. The Lasser article included actual numerical evidence for the conclusions that she was drawing, including charts and graphs. I think that this is a huge advantage, both in terms of legitimizing the findings and also making them easier to understand and visualize. That being said, I think that a disadvantage is that we don’t really know how accurate or meaningful that those numbers really are. As I saw when I actually looked at the American Periodical Series, I am not sure that all those articles that Lasser was quantifying are even about the subject that she was addressing, which I think brings up the issue of reliability of what these numbers even mean.

   Although I am not sure about how meaningful Lasser’s findings are, I found her article to be more interesting than the Walters article. I think the reason for this has not so much to do with close reading vs. distant reading, but with the examples they used. The most interesting part of the Walters article for me was when he was using actual examples. I thought that the part about the Wares was interesting because it was clear and specific. I think that the Lasser article was more interesting because it included more specific examples, especially at the beginning. The examples Lasser used at the beginning of her article made what I had just read in the Walters article “click.”

   I think that the question of specific examples vs. generalities is a really good way to describe what sources such as the American Periodical Series are really useful for—finding specific illustrations for the general point that you are trying to make. Since I had already read both the Lasser article and the Walters article, I was able to find specific articles that supported this anecdotally in the American Periodical Series. I think this is what really makes things like this useful sources—to make your research really come to life with relevant examples. I think this is a more useful application than distant reading which is both not as interesting, more difficult, and of questionable reliability.

6. While distant reading defiantly has its pace in the study of historical writings, I have personally found it quite cumbersome to use. The blog assignment for this post asked the class to use the American Periodical Series Online in an attempt to recreate the work done by historian Carol Lasser. Lasser’s work is a study of the frequency of “sexualized” rhetoric in the writings of American Abolitionists, spanning the period between 1800 and 1862. In my attempt to recreate Lasser’s work I searched for the words “Abolition,” “Slavery,” “Adulterous,” and “Immorality.” As expected the search engine churned out articles and letters vigorously attacking the immortality and sexual exploitation of slaves by their Southern Owners. Like Taylor a majority of the results I found were between the time period of 1830 and 1850. I was particularly intrigued by the portion of the Lasser article that dealt with Joshua Giddings’ attacks on the annexation of Texas. I further refined my search by limiting the time range to the years of the Republic of Texas’ existence and a few years after annexation (specifically 1836-1852). Like Lasser I found a surge of “sexualized” rhetoric surrounding the years when annexation was being debated. It can be easily inferred that the annexation of another slave state proved to be a time when an increased abolitionist movement was needed. I believe that this use of language was an attempt not only to mobilize women to the Abolitionist cause, but to also create a media barrage portraying the slave owners as immoral, adulterous, and the scum of the earth. From my research using the Periodical Series Online, it appears that it was easier to attack the slave owners as being immoral than it was to attack the institution of slavery as an immoral institution.

   From my experience using distant reading, I believe it can be used as a research tool, but not as a form of historical research as a stand-alone. Simply inserting terms in to a search engine is not complete enough to draw historical inferences from. In my experience using the Periodical Series Online, to get effective results it took much time and filtering. By filtering a search to the extent that I had to too achieve meaningful results similar to Lasser’s I believe that many relevant texts were omitted. Being a historian should not be a science of creating spin for a topic, and by so strictly filtering results you often eliminate essential parts of the Historical record. My view of this could be skewed because of the difficulty I had attempting to recreate Lasser’s results. Admittedly, I am not the most computer savvy person, and this was a stumbling block for me. I do not believe that I was able to access the full capabilities of the Periodical Series Online in my searches. With time I believe that I could become more refined and achieve better results.

   That said by reading the works of both Lasser and Walters, I am intrigued by the prospect of using distant reading as a revolutionary tool to research historical writings. To me Lasser did a decent job of integrating close reading with distant reading, but I believe that the relevance of Walters’ use of close reading greatly exceeded that of Lasser’s work. Walters’ work on the relationships derived form slavery was more credible to me than Lasser’s work with distant reading and “Voyeuristic Abolitionism.”

   That said I believe that with time and regulation Distant reading will become a “Game Changer” in the field of Historical research, I believe that by utilizing Distant Reading Historians will be able to better analyze the information that they attained through close reading relative to the time period. Distant reading will never be able to stand alone as a form of historical research, just as Wikipedia will never be an acceptable historical source. But by coupling Distant reading and close reading the historical community will greatly benefit in years to come.

7. In using the search methods described by Lasser, I found that the “sexually orientated terms” were not used frequently in the 1820s but started gaining currency in the 1830s, somewhat coinciding with Lasser’s findings (she says that there’s a sudden spike in the frequency in the late 1830s). On the other hand, I found that the “terms” to be used in relatively high volume in the 1840s, and the highest in the 1850s, which were contrary to her findings.

   I did some close reading of articles under Lasser’s search criteria. I found out that because the search engine itself does not account for the context of the article, it was difficult for me to draw the same conclusions that Lasser drew in her article. First, many of the articles, because out of context, were not relevant to slavery. An article that the search engine ranked as highly relevant criticized the licentious doctrine in Universalism, not of the southern slave holders and their immoral sexual acts to slave women. Second, if the article was related to slavery, it did not necessarily criticize the sexual abuse of the slave masters. For instance, an article provided by the search engine criticized that slavery prohibits the amalgamation of the races, and mentioned nothing about the sexual misconducts of the slave owners.

   Then, I did some distant reading of Walter’s article to see if his conclusions raised in his close reading would show correlation in the search results. Using the same criteria as that of Lasser, I added “power” along with the “sexually orientated terms.” Again, I had a difficult time finding the articles that lead to Walter’s opinion, simply because many articles were drawn out of context.

   These two searches showed that distant reading was effective in finding the frequency of the words used in the articles, but was not as helpful in terms of finding specific articles that were actually relevant.

   Because of this inherent imperfection in the search engines and distant reading, Lasser uses distant reading along with close reading to reach her conclusion. She first uses close reading to give context to Voyeuristic Abolitionism was in the 1830s, and then provides distant reading data. Then to explain the distribution of data, she again uses close reading to reach the conclusion that “Voyeuristic abolitionism lost its place [after the 1850s] when free white men, rather than enslaved African American women, became the victims of ‘the peculiar institution’” (Lasser, p. 113).