Published: April 30, 2013

There are some key differences between a human heart and an artichoke heart. Literature PhD candidate Kirstyn Leuner wants to be clear about that. However, word frequency analysis tools may enhance learning when combined with contextual reading. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a really good sign, as a teacher, when you鈥檙e excited about reading a batch of papers,鈥 says Leuner, 鈥渁nd I鈥檓 receiving some of the best student papers I鈥檝e ever read.鈥

teaches her students to analyze literature like scientists. She encourages them to see words as data and to look for patterns and trends in language. As a graduate instructor and a 2013 ASSETT Teaching with Technology award winner, Leuner has been experimenting with different technologies in the classroom for nearly a decade. She often uses blogs and social media tools like Twitter and to help her students understand Shakespeare, romantic literature, and women鈥檚 literature. 鈥淪he made the old Gothic novels we were reading feel more modern,鈥 said one student.

Kirstyn Leuner

Kirstyn Leuner Photo by: Michael Riberdy, UCB Libraries

鈥淚鈥檝e always been interested in old things,鈥 says Leuner, describing her fascination 19th Century Romanticism as she thumbs through a generously dog-eared book of Daguerreotypes and dioramas. But although Leuner may be a romantic, she isn鈥檛 old-fashioned: At , where Leuner started her PhD studies, she met scholar Laura Mandell. 鈥淢andell introduced me to this whole new world of teaching and research that involved technology and digital tools,鈥 she explained. It was at Miami that Leuner first learned how to TEI encode texts and to experiment with WordPress blog. These dueling interests followed her to the PhD program at Colorado and her at The University of Denver.

鈥淚 think of text as data,鈥 says Leuner.听 鈥淚 think scholars and students need to learn to zoom in and to zoom out of text. Close reading is important, but you need to juxtapose that with zooming out in order to analyze word data and see how these moments of close reading are just a small snapshot of how language works in the piece as a whole. Voyant helps us do that.鈥

is a free, web-based tool developed by that is more often used by scholars than undergraduate students. Once texts are uploaded, users can search for words and analyze frequency trends throughout a text. 鈥淰oyant does amazing things,鈥 says Leuner, leaning across her desk in excitement. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a step-up from Wordle. It shows you a breakdown of the number of times words are repeated and you can track or graph the frequency of words over the course of a novel.鈥

During the past semester, Leuner has begun to incorporate Voyant into her class assignments. When Leuner鈥檚 students studied Charlotte Dacre鈥檚 gothic novel Zofloya, they noticed an inverse relationship between the frequency of the word 鈥渉eart鈥 and the word 鈥渉and.鈥 After looking more deeply at the text, the students discussed whether or not these trends related to the theme of revenge by sword or dagger (hand) for unrequited love (heart). "Of course the students also looked at the context of these words to make sure the author was referring to human hearts and not artichoke hearts," Leuner explains.

Another student worked on an independent project exploring the frequency of the word 鈥渄oor鈥 in听 Ann Radcliffe鈥檚 A Sicilian Romance, which takes place in a mazelike castle. 听After using Voyant to graph the overarching trends, the student did some close reading and argued that the word "door" was a metaphor for opportunity within the context of the novel.

It really isn鈥檛 surprising that Leuner鈥檚 students are writing papers that are more advanced than before. Leuner is using Voyant to ask more advanced questions. 鈥淚n the past, this kind of analysis involving word frequency trends would have been too much to ask of an undergraduate class,鈥 said Leuner, explaining that her students are tackling questions that would have been a challenge for advanced scholars just ten years ago. 鈥淧reviously, I wouldn鈥檛 have thought to give them that assignment. They just wouldn鈥檛 have had the data.鈥

鈥淲hy go at books the same way we have been going at them forever?鈥 asks Leuner, whose own research involves many of these questions about word patterns and trends in language over time. Perhaps one of the most rewarding aspects of her new teaching strategy is that, with access to tools like Voyant, Leuner can now have conversations with her students about the very questions that she is so invested in. 鈥淎s a digital humanist, this is the wonderful way in which my research and my teaching meet.鈥

Article written by: Ashley E Williams