Thinking Activity : Feminism and Cyberfeminism: Artificial intelligence and unconscious business

 Hello Readers! 

Welcome to my blog I'm going to write about what is Cyberfeminism and talk of Kirti Sharma on How tobkeep women bias out of AI and talk of Robin Hauser on Can we protect AI from our biases. This task is given by Dr. Dilip Barad click here to learn more about this. 

• What is Cyberfeminism

Social and artistic practices on the net with feminist ideological content. Learn more in: Collaborative and Open Education by Interdisciplinary Women's Networks: FemTechNet and Feminist Pedagogies in Digital Education.

Feminist movement interpreting the evolution of cybernetics as allowing the development of a culture in which inequalities are eradicated and traditional gender relations and stereotypes are defied (for instance, through the experimentation with gender identities or the creation of sisterhood networks on the Internet), empowering women and marking a shift away from their traditional symbolic representation as technologically ignorant. Learn more in: From Digital Divides to Digital Inequalities.

Discipline within feminism that sees cyberspace and virtual reality as neutral realms in terms of gender. This school of thought visions a society beyond gendered bodies where women can communicate and act outside the restrictions imposed by patriarchal societies. Learn more in: Gender, Body, and Computing Technologies in the Science-Fiction Film.

Cyberfeminism: Artificial Intelligence and the Unconscious Biases

Cyberfeminism appeared in the 1980s and founded on the ideas post-humanist feminist thinker Donna Haraway expresses in her A Cyborg Manifesto. In this manifesto, she lays the groundwork for the concept of the internet being a revolutionary tool to overthrow patriarchy, destroy the existing gender binary and achieve feminist liberation. She sees the internet as a new neutral space women need to ally with and that needs to be shaped by women in a way that will allow them to overthrow the existing social order.

1. Kirti Sharma: How to keep human bias out of AI?

We see this everywhere. This media panic that our robot overlords are taking over. We could blame Hollywood for that. But in reality, that's not the problem we should be focusing on. There is a more pressing danger, a bigger risk with AI, that we need to fix first. 

When you work in technology and you don't look like a Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, your life is a little bit difficult, your ability gets questioned. 

Here's just one example. Like most developers, she often join online tech forums and share my knowledge to help others. And she've found, when she log on as myself, with my own photo, my own name, she tend to get questions or comments like this: 

"What makes you think you're qualified to talk about AI?" "What makes you think you know about machine learning?"

 So, as you do, she  made a new profile, and this time, instead of her own picture, she chose a cat with a jet pack on it. And she chose a name that did not reveal my gender. You can probably guess where this is going, right? So, this time, she didn't get any of those patronizing comments about my ability and she was able to actually get some work done. And it sucks, guys. She've been building robots since she  was 15, she have a few degrees in computer science, and yet, she had to hide my gender in order for my work to be taken seriously. 

Kirti Sharma very asked question that ,

Are men just better at technology than women? 

Another study found that when women coders on one platform hid their gender, like myself, their code was accepted four percent more than men. So this is not about the talent. This is about an elitism in AI that says a programmer needs to look like a certain person. What we really need to do to make AI better is bring people from all kinds of backgrounds. We need people who can write and tell stories to help us create personalities of AI. We need people who can solve problems. We need people who face different challenges and we need people who can tell us what are the real issues that need fixing and help us find ways that technology can actually fix it. Because, when people from diverse backgrounds come together, when we build things in the right way, the possibilities are limitless.

2. Robin Hauser: Can we protect AI from our biases?

Robin is the director and producer of cause‐based documentary films at Finish Line Features, Inc. and Unleashed Productions, Inc. As a business woman, long time professional photographer and social entrepreneur, Robin brings her leadership skills, creative eye and passion to her documentary film projects. Her artistic vision and experience in the business world afford her a unique perspective on what it takes to motivate an audience. Her most recent award‐winning film, CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival 2015, and has caught the eye of the international tech industry and of policy makers and educators in Washington, DC and abroad. Robin is currently directing and producing bias, a documentary about unconscious bias and how it affects our lives socially and in the workplace.

As humans we're inherently biased. Sometimes it's explicit and other times it's unconscious, but as we move forward with technology how do we keep our biases out of the algorithms we create? Documentary filmmaker Robin Hauser argues that we need to have a conversation about how AI should be governed and ask who is responsible for overseeing the ethical standards of these supercomputers. "We need to figure this out now," she says. "Because once skewed data gets into deep learning machines, it's very difficult to take it out."

Thank you ! 

Sunday Reading : Visit to an Art Gallery: Ajanta Exhibition

 

Hello Readers!

Welcome to my blog. This blog is a part of Sunday Reading activities.  We have a task that we go to visit Art  Gallery about Exhibition of Ajanta Caves as a part of cultural studies. We have to write experience of visiting Art Gallery Exhibition. 

History of Ajanta Caves 

The Ajanta Caves are generally agreed to have been made in two distinct phases, the first during the 2nd century BCE to 1st century CE, and a second several centuries later.

The caves consist of 36 identifiable foundations, some of them discovered after the original numbering of the caves from 1 through . The later-identified caves have been suffixed with the letters of the alphabet, such as 15A, identified between originally numbered caves 15 and 16. The cave numbering is a convention of convenience, and does not reflect the chronological order of their construction.

Painting of Ajanta Caves 

While showing this all painting of Ajanta cave we feel like we are in Ajnta cave. Very beautiful painting. 

The paintings in the Ajanta caves predominantly narrate the Jataka tales. These are Buddhist legends describing the previous births of the Buddha. These fables embed ancient morals and cultural lores that are also found in the fables and legends of Hindu and Jain texts. The Jataka tales are exemplified through the life example and sacrifices that the Buddha made in hundreds of his past incarnations, where he is depicted as having been reborn as an animal or human.

Mural paintings survive from both the earlier and later groups of caves. Several fragments of murals preserved from the earlier caves (Caves 10 and 11) are effectively unique survivals of ancient painting in India from this period, and "show that by Sātavāhana times, if not earlier, the Indian painters had mastered an easy and fluent naturalistic style, dealing with large groups of people in a manner comparable to the reliefs of the Sāñcī toraņa crossbars". Some connections with the art of Gandhara can also be noted, and there is evidence of a shared artistic idiom.

Some painting of Ajanta Exhibition 

👆Bodhisattva Padmapani 

A painting in cave number 1 of Ajanta caves, this is Buddha’s former existence portrayed as a painting. Cave number 1 of Ajanta caves is known for some of the most elaborate carvings and sculptures from the life of Gautam Buddha.

Thank you !

Thinking Activity: Foe . M. Coetzee

 

Foe  By  J . M. Coetzee 

• Cruso: the anti-hero

In the character of Robinson Crusoe, whose counterpart in Coetzee's novel is only called 'Cruso', we find the most evident and startling alterations of all characters. From the positive hero and master of even the most desperate situations in life, the former protagonist of Defoe's novel has turned into an anti-hero in Foe.

The actions of the original Robinson Crusoe are probably well known, so the behaviour of Cruso in Foe will mostly be contrasted to them[10].

Especially in his mode of living, Cruso differs enormously from his literary predecessor.

Cruso does not save anything from the wreck except for a knife [F16]. Moreover, he says that there is no need for tools [F32], and the few tools he has made himself are a needle made of fishbone [F9f.], a wooden spade, a "sharp stone lashed to a stick" as mattock, and carved blocks of wood as bowls [all F15f.]. Those are only the most essential tools for survival, i.e. the tools to build a hut, sew clothes, and eat. Compared to the equipment of his 18th-century predecessor, Cruso's equipment is indeed relatively poor: Robinson Crusoe had gotten clothes, tools, and firearms from the wreck [RC39], also razors, scissors, knives, and forks [RC41ff.]. Later on, he manages to make baskets [RC80], earthenware [RC89], a mortar and pestle [RC90], candles [RC106], a canoe [RC100], a tobacco pipe [RC106], etc. While Robinson Crusoe puts a lot of effort into improving his equipment and is always eager to get new tools[11], Cruso is satisfied once he reaches the state when mere survival is guaranteed[12]. In a way, both Crusoe and Cruso represent different 'stages' of civilisation: whereas Crusoe is constantly progressing to reach the state of an early agricultural society, Cruso does not intend to 'develop' or even change his lifestyle[13] but stays 'hunter and collector'. He is in no way interested in progress, and he rationalises not making any candles in a rather philosophic way: "Which is easier: to learn to see in the dark, or to kill a whale and seeth it down for the sake of a candle?"[14]. His cryptic explanation is both a hint to human laziness and a critique of progress itself. Juxtaposed with the never-ending energy of the original Crusoe to better and enhance his daily life towards a state of higher civilisation, Coetzee's interpretation of the castaway's character doubts the ideal of man as master of all nature. Instead of being the innovative, self-made engineer like Crusoe, Cruso is very much indifferent to his environment, also to his fellow castaways[15]. He thus is the exact opposite of Robinson Crusoe as representative of humanism, who first saves Friday and then a Spanish prisoner of the 'savages' (later on also Friday's father, who is tied in a canoe) from being slaughtered [RC148;171] and frees the victims of a mutiny [RC187].

Summary of the 'Foe'

Part 1

Susan Barton, searching for her missing daughter in Brazil, is thrown up on the island after a shipboard mutiny, and gradually adjusts to the basic environment and company of long-term castaway Cruso and African slave. Friday. Rescued a year later and upon Cruso's death from fever, Captain Smith, their rescuer, predicts great interest in the story and encourages Susan to write or team up with a writer.

Part II

Marooned again in English society when the chosen writer, Daniel Foe, flees his debits and runs from the bailiffs, Susan struggles to survive with the newly freed Friday in tow, impoverished and in danger, searching for the writer who has taken on her project - and taken over her life.

Part III

Susan eventually finds Foe and queries the book's progress, disputing content, shape and emphasis and exploring their conflicting views and goals. Susan is a realist and seeker of truth and Foe represents the commercial class in the new capitalist system but he is also a philosopher. Together they speculate about story and truth and the act of writing. And what to do with Friday is a key concem.

Part IV

An unidentified, neutral voice traces the generalised beginning and end of the story-unhinged from the embodied search for verifiable fact. Is this the "true" perspective? In two versions, it comes upon the characters in the submerged wreck of the ship. lifeless, only Friday is still barely alive. The speaker's point of view then travels out into a dimension of experience and sensation beyond humans and island and sea, beyond both speech and writing. "But this is not a place of words. This is a place where bodies are their own signs. It is the home of Friday" (157)

Themes

The Power of Stories

The novel explores the power of stories. Coetzee's book is written in parallel to Robinson Crusoe (1719) and the narrative of Foe repurposes an existing story. The book then examines the difficulty of telling such a story Coetzee's reinterpretation of the story of Robinson Crusoe dwells on the potential power of the story whereas Daniel Defoe's original book does not. Foe switches the focus away from Robinson Crusoe and toward Friday Coetzee portrays the world through the eyes of Susan Barton and examines the way in which a secondary character in the original story can find a voice and thus become imbued with new power.

Thinking Activity: Wide Sargasso Sea

 Hello Readers!

Welcome to my blog. Now I'm going to write about the comparison of Jane Eyre and wode Sargasso Sea. This task was given by Yesha ma'am. 

Question:1 Compare Jane Eyre with Wide Sargasso Sea. 

The two books Jane Eyre’s novel by Charlotte Brontë and Wide Sargasso Sea Novel by Jean Rhys, reveal various motifs including the concepts of feminism and postcolonialism. As such, the authors bring up substantial ideas on the way of living for people after colonization. They also reflect on the diversity of women globally by introducing a different approach to address human issues whereby a system of fairness, justice, and equal rights replaces the presiding patriarchy. This essay will explore the concepts of postcolonialism and feminism theory, as presented by Jane Eyre’s novel by Charlotte Brontë and Wide Sargasso Sea Novel by Jean Rhys.

In the novel Jane Eyre, Brontë reveals a firm stance on feminism by critiquing the assumptions about social class and gender. She also places the context within the postcolonialism era during the Victorian society age. Throughout the novel, Jane is subjected to some kind of oppression, where she has no financial or social freedom. The challenges she faces existed during the Victorian era, whereby women were considered powerless and as objects to serve their families and society. Jane fights gender hierarchies and class to ensure a status quo.

Jane is the epitome of femininity, the first instance where Jane starts to reveal feminism is when she fights with her cousin, blamed even if she was not the one at fault, and locked up for a night. She says to Mrs. Reed, “I’m not deceitful. If I were, I should say I loved you, but I declare, I don’t love you (Brontë, 2016).” Jane’s words seem mean; nonetheless, they are true. It is only fair to precisely tell others what one feels, instead of pretending as Mrs. Reed did even though she did not like Jane. The words are also ironic. In some way, Jane is trying to tell Mrs. Reed that she is deceitful as she had always acted as if she loved Jane and therefore being unfair.

More feminist ideals are revealed in Jane’s relationship with Rochester. The two do not belong to the same social class. Jane is a governess and, therefore, less than a family member. Her financial status can also not be compared with Mr. Rochester, who is successful and wealthy, while Jane is just an employee. Despite the clarity on the differences between the two, Jane refuses to consider herself inferior. For example, she says to Mr. Rochester, “Do you think I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong — I have as much soul as you, — and full as much heart…I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; — it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal, — as we are” (Brontë, 2016). The statement shows Jane denying being of lesser status. She even ignores the fact that she is a woman and Rochester, a man, and instead focuses on a spiritual stance to define their identities, which demonstrates equality.

Further, more ideas on feminism theory reveal Jane’s belief in love. When she realizes Mr. Rochester is married; she does not agree to marry him. Jane believes marriage should be based on respect, equality, true love, not appearance, social class, or material possessions. Jane further demonstrates the same belief when she turns down John after proposing. Jane believes John’s love would be “one of duty and not of passion” (Brontë, 2016). This reveals Jane’s irony reflection of her determination to pursue true love.

Brontë’s work also demonstrates postcolonialism whereby Western culture is considered Eurocentric. This means that European values are universal and natural compared to Eastern ideas that are inferior (Hobson, 2012). For instance, Bertha, a foreign woman, reflects the Eurocentric and dominant ideologies of England in the 19th century concerning race. Bertha is the racial other and colonized madwoman who threatens British men and women as embodied in Mr. Rochester and Jane. Jane presents Bertha Mason as Vampiric, who sucks away from Mr. Rochester’s innocence. According to Mr. Rochester, he was innocent until the savage woman took his goodness. Also, Jane, a British, cannot get married because Bertha has occupied the wife’s position, denying Jane’s identity. The situation shows how British people characterized and feared women and foreigners during postcolonialism. The fear was not because they thought the subjects were powerful, but because they considered them inferior and evil. The “blood-red” moon reflected in Bertha’s eyes represents her sexual potency, whereby Bertha refuses to be controlled. Her stature is almost equal to her husband’s. According to postcolonialism, Bertha’s death is meant as a sacrifice to restore British people’s superiority, whereby Mr. Rochester acquires freedom to marry Jane while Jane achieves her self-identity.

Further, in the postcolonialism era, men considered women to be their appendages (Katrak, 2006). Men would work, own business, and remain in public. However, only family life and marriage belonged to women. They had to depend on men spiritually, financially, and physically. For example, Adele and her mother demonstrate this idea, whereby they depend on Mr. Rochester for everything. Their dependence is further despised by the British people like Jane and Mr. Rochester consider them sensual and materialistic, characteristics associated with foreign women at the time.

Jane’s description of Bertha Marson and Adele and her mother is ironic. Jane is driven by feminism theory. The goal of feminists is to ensure there is gender equality in all humanity. As such, no woman should be discriminated against, oppressed, or subjected to the hierarchy (Tong, 2018). Nonetheless, Jane plays a significant role in discriminating against foreign women. She represents Jane as Vampiric and Adele and the mother materialistic. By doing so, she supports Mr. Rochester, who considers himself innocent even though that is not the case. The actions go against what she stands for.

Additionally, Wide Sargasso Sea Novel by Jean Rhys also reveals aspects of feminism theory and postcolonialism. Rhys is a British born writer who wrote the novel Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966 in response to Jane Eyre’s novel by Charlotte Brontë. Rhys describes the marriage of Rochester from Antoinette, his mad wife. The author creates another picture and perspective of Antoinette by focusing on the reasons behind her madness. During the postcolonialism era, the English people prejudiced against the West Indies. Antoinette was from this discriminated group, and she was married to an English Black man. Therefore, Antoinette went through a double tragedy due to racism that was common during the postcolonialism period. First, she grew up in slavery and received barely any attention from her mother. The black community also did not accept her as she was white. Additionally, her marriage was arranged, and she got married to a man that did not like her and, together with his English community, discriminated against her (Rhys, 1992). These events reveal oppressions which Antoinette had to overcome. All her life, Antoinette was caught up between the black native and English imperialists; hence, she tried to fight for acceptance, love, and happiness. Her efforts represent the propositions of feminism theory, whereby equality in all humans is necessary. However, this leads to her being renamed and enslaved in the Thornfield attic.

According to Rhys, patriarchal oppression and imperialism drove Mr. Rochester’s first wife mad (Olaussen, 1993). The reasoning represents the feminism concept where oppression, discrimination, and torture for women was real. This is unlike in Brontë’s Jane Eyre, whereby Antoinette’s madness represents the evilness and inferiority of foreign women.

Further, the idea of inequality and dependence of women on men is revealed more in Rhys’ work. This can be seen as the author intertwines madness, enslavement, and womanhood. The author presents feminine deportment ideals to the protagonists since she was young while studying at the convent school. Two Creole girls, including Helene de Plana and Miss Germaine, symbolize the feminine virtues that Antoinette should emulate. These include even-tempered manners, chastity, and mild and beauty. Further, mother St. Justine praises the “imperturbable” and the “poised” sisters. This indicates that Creole women in the 19th century were supposed to assume such ideals of womanhood. Nonetheless, Antoinette’s nature was at odds with the suggested requirements as she was fiery and hot. Consequently, her behavior contributes to her implied madness and melancholy.

It is unexpected that positive energy attracts problems, as in Antoinette’s case. This also reveals more irony. People turn a blind eye to the challenges the protagonist goes through. The problems have the potential to affect someone as they did to Antoinette. However, still, no one seems to consider that, based on the statement that her fiery and hotness contributed to her madness and melancholy. The irony can be noted in Mr. Rochester’s words when he says, “I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers, and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever color, I hated their beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and cruelty, which was part of its loveliness. Above all, I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She had left me thirsty, and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it” (Rhys, 1992). This statement has antagonism where the beauty that attracts Antoinette to Rochester initially drives her away in the end. Rochester’s words also indicate that she does not like the loveliness of her wife and home, too, as they threaten to bewitch and ensnare him. The passage palpably exposes his cruel desire to gain control over Antoinette. Again, an indication of women’s oppression associated with feminism during the postcolonialism period.

Moreover, Rhys represents women as appendages to men who depend on them for financial and legal support (Friedman, & Fuchs, 2014). In the beginning, Antoinette’s mother depends on her husband, Antoinette’s father, who was a slave. When the father dies, Antoinette’s mother seeks a second marriage and uses it as a way to regain status and escape her poverty life at Colibri. Also, men increase their wealth by marrying women and gain access to the inheritance of their wives. The two scenarios present womanhood as synonymous with dependence exhibited by children by relying on the nearest man for survival. Antoinette seeks to assuage her fears of a vulnerable outsider by marrying the White English man; however, the husband, Mr. Rochester, betrays and abandons her.

Another aspect that comes out in Rhys’ novel Wide Sargasso Sea is irony. To begin with, the representation of the entire book, whereby she antagonizes Brontë’s Jane Eyre, is ironic. Rhys considers Antoinette as a woman who has gone through many challenges in life and became mad while trying to discover her happiness. This is quite the opposite of Brontë’s version, which represents Bertha’s madness, an unfortunate and inferior behavior associated with foreign women. Brontë’s heroine, Jane, does not examine the case of Bertha in-depth when she finds out Mr. Rochester is married. Instead, she believes in Mr. Rochester’s version of the wife, which gives the representation of the Creole woman. This kind of stereotyping was common in England in the 19th century (Dhawan, 2000).

The Wide Sargasso Sea novel also portrays irony as the author tries to describe the idea of postcolonialism. Rhys wants readers to realize that being a casted woman is demanding. Therefore, with Antoinette’s Creole character, individuals have to understand that they cannot change their inevitable, and thus they should accept events as they turn out.

In conclusion, aspects of feminism and postcolonialism contributed a lot to the works of the 19th century. Rhys and Brontë reveal this as they reveal the representation of women in the Victorian era. The authors also utilize irony to develop feminism further and postcolonialism ideas.-

Question: 2  Compare character of Jane with Antoinette  

Jane and Antoinette

Rhys draws parallels between Jane Eyre and Antoinette:

• Both are isolated, powerless and without protection, in a world hostile to unsupported women.
• Both of them lose their mothers, if in different ways, but find important substitutes who are teachers or servants.
• Both experience dreams that are significant for later events in their stories.

However, there are also strong contrasts between them:

• Antoinette is vulnerable while Jane is made stronger by her experiences.
• Jane has a more coherent sense of herselfJane establishes equality in her relationship with Rochester.

Thinking Activity : The Home and The World by Rabindranath Tagore

 

Hello Readers!

 Welcome to my blog I'm going to write about the Novel The Home and The world by Rabindranath Tagore. This task was given by Heena ma'am. 

Rabindranath Tagore 

Rabindranath Tagore, , Bengali Rabīndranāth Ṭhākur, (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, painter, educator, philosopher and humanitarian. He also composed roughly 2,230 songs. His writings address a variety of topics. He was highly influential in introducing Indian culture to the west and vice versa. In 1913 he became the first non-European as well as the first lyricist to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. In 1915, he was knighted by the George V, King of the United Kingdom and Emperor of India, but he later renounced the knighthood as a protest against the 1919 Jaliānwala Bāgh massacre. His songs, Jana Gana Mana and Amar Śonar Bangla, later became the national anthems for India and Bangladesh respectively.

To the west, Tagore is mainly known as the voice of India’s spiritual heritage; and that certainly does not do justice to his all pervasive influence upon generations of authors as well as common people. In India, his authority is exploited to justify all sorts of political and ideological stance – expanding from extreme right to the liberal and the left. What is really missing is a healthy critical discourse on this great author. Tagore’s genius is comparable with that of Shakespeare's.

The Home and The world by Rabindranath Tagore  

The Home and the World (in the original Bengali, ঘরে বাইরে Ghôre Baire or Ghare Baire, lit. "At home and outside") is a 1916 novel by Rabindranath Tagore.  The book illustrates the battle Tagore had with himself, between the ideas of Western Culture and revolution against the Western culture. These two ideas are portrayed in two of the main characters, Nikhilesh, who is rational and opposes violence, and Sandip, who will let nothing stand in his way from reaching his goals. These two opposing ideals are very important in understanding the history of the Bengal region and its contemporary problems. 1 To see the growth of individual character. 

Write about Rabindranath Tagore’s art of characterization. 

The novel "The Home and The World" is a 1916 novel by Rabindranath Tagore. The book illustrates the battle Tagore had with himself, between the ideas of Western culture and revolution against the Western culture. Here our main concern is his art of characterisation. 

The ‘Home and the World’ is a superb study in the psychological analysis of character. In the novel, we feel Tagore’s adept use of the multiple points of view technique which makes for a clear renunciation of the motives and states of mind of the principal characters. The device of presenting separate segments of the story through different characters helps Tagore to highlight the internal conflicts and convulsions. The principal characters in the novel are Nikhil, his wife Bimala and his close friend Sandip. 

In the character of Nikhil, we see a true picture of a patriot who reflects the extra-national ideas that one should possess. Nikhil, a landlord of substantial means, is a man of noble ideas. Gently, rational and thoughtful, he cannot approve of any political programme based on violence and cunning. Nikhil has a rationalistic and constructive approach with emphasis on self-reliance and righteous means, to the problem of Indian emancipation. Nikhil though supports Swadeshi has not wholeheartedly adopted the spirit of Bande Matram. His “dull, milk and watery Swadeshi” does not appeal to his wife Bimala. Nikhil, though perturbed and pained by Bimala’s growing infatuation with Sandip, refuses to intervene and waits patiently for her to realize the truth of circumstances and recent herself headlong rush to ruin. He even refuses to banish foreign goods from the markets and argues that it is for the people to choose between indigenous and foreign goods. He declares, 

“To tyrannize for the county is to tyrannize over the country” 

He believes in the eventual triumph of the good. 

As opposed to Nikhil’s genuine patriotism, sandip is opportunistic and means for achieving personal power. He is a hypocrite, unscrupulous, capable of sweeping along everyone with magnetism, sophistry and rhetoric. He is a man of action, dynamic, adventurous, experienced in the use of stratagems. Sandip goes about inflaming the people with the cult of Bande Matram and the concept of freedom by force Sandip exploits Bimala, Nikhil’s wife by exploring her as the “Queen Bee” of the Swadesh workers. Through clever flattery she lays a share for her mind and body by hailing her as the “Shakti of the Motherland” A juggler of words, Sandip succeeds however in winning the sympathies of Bimala and also prepares her to steal the gold sovereign’s from her own house. Tagore has represented Sandip as a black-hearted Patriot who shut the door on humanity and truth, and for his own utterly selfish and inflamed, immature minds to frenzy in the name of patriotism. 

In characterizing Bimala, Tagore has put his great efforts to expose, beautiful young wife torn between two men she loves and likes. Bimala has lived the sheltered a life of a Hindu wife and the “Home” is the world for her until Sandip makes his disturbing appearance. In the opening chapter, we are acquainted with Bimala as a true house wife, devoted to her husband and shares his ideals until she is swept off her feet by the eruption of the Swadeshi Movement. It breaks down the barriers between the home and the world for Bimala. In this critical situation the fiery eloquence of Sandip holds Bimala spellbound. She admires the seemingly glowing patriotism of Sandip. Bimala’s attraction for Sandip at first is purely intellectual but soon changes from admiration to infatuation. Bimala is temporarily swayed by the maddening cry of “Bande Matram” and robs her own house. Like a cunning thief, for the sake of so called national cause. But, she is horrified when in lucid interval the ugly truth flashes on her, and she detests wholeheartedly the filthy means of Sandip to worship the Mother. His greed and lust masqueraded and paraded as nationalism, are extremely repulsive to Bimala now. She repents sincerely for her folly in looking down on her husband Nikhil, as an impotent idealist, whom she misunderstood up till now. 

Assignment Sem-3 : The Curse of Karna : T.P. Kailasm

Name : Pina Gondaliya 

Semester  : 3 

Assignment Paper No : 6 Indian English literature pre- independence 

Topic : Analysis of the play 'The Curse of Karna.'

Submitted to  : Department of English M.K.Bhavnager. 

T . P. Kailasm

Tyagaraja  Paramasiva kailasam , popularly known as T. P. Kailasam was both a great playwright and a talented actor. His plays are lively representation of themes taken mostly from ancient Indian literature.  Commenting upon it S. Krishna Bhatta observs : 

It appears that his knowledge of ancient Indian literature and his long stay in England urged him to contribute something concrete to this sparsely cultivalted field. In spite of

The Curse of Karna 

Kailasam, in The Purpose, has beautifully concealed the conflict of the High-born and low-born behind the curtain of the struggler for supremacy in archery. However, as the play belong to pre-independent India, there can be identified certain hints and suggestions of colonial expansion and the exploitation of the have nots like Ekalavya. In this context Ekalavya seems to be representing fighters of freedom, wolves the English rulers, deer and fawns the people of India, and Arjuna symbolizes the feudal lords who obliquely helps the wolves.

Karna: The Brahmin's Curse (1946), better known as The Curse or Karna is Kailasam's "more sustained dramatic adventure."² Kailasam seems to have made up his mind to recast and reassess the characters like Ekalavya, Karna an Keechaka to whom, in his opinion, justice may not have been done in the original Mahabharata. In the Curse or Karna he, with certain dirgressions from the original epic, has exalted the character of Karna. "What attracts Kailasam to Karna is the peculiarly human predicament. Karna's divinity is not his concern. Karna is a great soul circumscribed by an irrevocable fate and driven to ruin by a relentless curse, and the very nobility of his choice haunts him. Kailasam narrows his focus on Karna to his inevitable humanity." Karna, born to Kuntee with the blessing of the Sun god invoked by her during the days of her virginity, is left drifting on the waters of the Ganga to live and die by his known fate.

 He is fortunately found by Adhiratha and Radha, a couple belonging to the low - class of the charioteers, and is brought up by them as their own son. Resultantly he is called the son of a suta, and therefore, he is debarred from all princely activities. Concealing his identity as the son of a low-born suta he becomes the disciple of Parasurama by calling himself a Brahmin's son. Somehow his identity is discovered and the angry Brahmin curses that the knowledge he has gained from him will be of no use to him in the moment of need. This curse follows Karna throughout his life.

The source of this play in five acts is The Mahabharata ('Adi', 'Sabha' and 'Karna' Parvas). It appears that this was originally designed by Kailasam to be a screenplay. S. Krishna Bhatta summarizes how the theme of this play flashed in the mind of Kailasam:

It is learnt that this concept of Karna flashed in his mind on the occasion of giving a recital of The Purpose in 1927 at the West End Hotel, Bangalore. He left C.R. Reddy for a few minutes and went out, all the time mumbling questions like 'Karna? his birth..Oh yes; son of the sun; flung adrift; Radha, the mother; suta; the Guru's curse.. The swayamavra; the sabha scene; the killing! Then he rushed in and said to Reddy, 'I have it, Sir. Thus sprang the play traversing the entire gamut of Karna's life.¹

K.V. Aiyer, one of Kailasam's close associates and disciples, also tells us of his intention of writing a play on Karna. On a cold December night both Kailasam and Aiyer had gone to see a play performed by an English company. On their way back, at about two in the morning, Kailasam stopped him and said, "Venkatesh, now I will entertain you with my Karna.. I have a great idea. This Karna is to be a big drama by Kailasam."

Kailasam has great fascination for the mythological characters, however, he makes them his own. The same is the case with Karna. He prefers characters from the Mahabharata to those from the Ramayana, because in the former they are all human while in the latter they are all spiritual. Kailasam believes that the figures in The Mahabharata are all human. They have all that the other human beings have-love, hate, virtues; but at a higher level. That is why it is possible to delineate them, while the persons of The Ramayana are all spiritual and possessed of self-knowledge-Sabari, Ravana, Vali, Indrajit, Rama, Laxman, Kaikeyi-they all know themselves. He admits that he can only sketch a scene here and there about Sabari or Bharata..The Ramayana is not his business. As far as this play is concerned, The Mahabharata means to him not more than the tragedy of Karna. The fate of Karna dazzles him so much that he takes from the original only that which subserves his dramatic vision; he distorts facts boldly and even recklessly to erect a magnificent Karna."

Act    1 

The play begins with Karana's completion of education at Parasurama's ashram. At the very last moment of his departure from the ashram he loses all he has earned during his stay there. Guru Parasurama is sleeping and Karna puts his head on his lap with tender concern for his teacher. Suddenly a wasp comes on to his lap and starts sucking blood from Karna's thigh, but he does not let his leg shake so as not to disturb the sleep of his Guru. But somehow the blood from his thing oozes out and the Guru wakes up. Seeing this extraordinary tolerance and patience Parasurama instantly concludes that such a youth cannot be Brahmin, as he has pretended to be; he must be no other than a Kshatriya. Guru, being a sworn destroyer of the Kshatriya, gets angry to the extent of cursing this sincere disciple thus : 

           .....And for thy dastard of lie,list to a brahmins curse:

THE USE OF ARMS YOU'VE LEARNT OF ME, ...THE BAREST TALK, THE MEREST THOUGHT OF THY MIND.. WILL SWELL THY HEART TO SENSE OF SHAME, WILL DULL THINE EYES AND MIND, NUMB AND PARALYSE THE LIMBS BEYOND THEIR POWER TO HELP THEE MAKE THE SLIGHTEST, SMALLEST USE OF KNOWLEDGE THAT YOU'VE LEARNT OF ME! AVAUNT! AVAUNT! ERE I INFLICT A FURTHER CURSE ON THEE !!

With Parasurama's declaration of this curse Karna's tragedy is ordained. The Guru himself feels, "Karna! My love for thee reveals to me that Fate hath wove thy life and death in the threads of tragedy."As a result of this curse, whenever, Karna tries to overpower his fate and circumstances, he is reminded of his low-caste and thus humiliated to the extent he forgets all his art and knowledge. 

Act  2  

In Act II, scene i, Karna is distinguished as matchless hero and Arjuna is about to lose his position of the best archer in the world, but the Brahmin's curse again appears before him in the form of Kripacharya who asks him for his credentials; and Karna has only this much to say:

... Intrinsic worth, it is, my liege, not accidental birth, That gauges human's use for Mother Earth! The Brahmin birth of these adversaries Of mine will no more guide their shafts Aright, than mine will turn away by reason of My suta-birth.

None is there to recognize Karna's merit irrespective of his birth and parentage. Without any shade of doubt he is a matchless warrior, but he repeatedly discouraged by the Pundits and the Pandavas. The magnificent hero is forced to cry thus:

It is a curse, my lord of Gandhara,That robbed mine arms and trunk of strength and life: A mighty Brahmin's potent curse that rules:Whensoever my lowly birth is flung at me, And made to cross my mind, my brain refuses thought! A Brahmin's curse!My heart refuse beat! Mine arms remain inert! Pray, pity me, lord, a helpless victim of A Brahmin's Curse. 

Act   3 

In Act III again the Brahmin's curse victimizes Karna, who is badly humiliated by Draupadi in her swayamvara. As soon as he rises to try his chance, she boldly declares that even if the sutui's son fulfils the condition of marriage, she will not accept him. Act IV presents the greatest moment of Karna's chivalry and nobility. With certain bold digressions Kailasam presents the episode of Drupadi's humiliation in presence of the elders of the Kuru family. In the original Mahabharata Draupadi is humiliated, dragged by hair to the assembly hall and an attempt is made to disrobe her by Dusshasana. Karna also passes certain insulting comments on Draupadi. It is only Krishna who comes on to rescue her with infinite drapery. But Kailasam's Karna, instead of passing remarks, comes forward for her rescue and defies the Kaurava princes with boldness and courage of a true warrior. He warns Dusshasana, "Move but a step and you die. " Ridiculing the passive husbands and the elders he throws a warning:

O King of Kuruland! Now list! This he That now addresses thee is not the suta king of Angaland! Nor is he thy servant or thy friend! I speak to thee and all assembled here As pupil of dread Rama who exacts his fee...

and the fee is "to extirpate Kshatriya who drunk of pow'r\And pride, do use the strength that God gave them\To harass humans. "Referring to their weaknesses and moral passivity Karna criticizes the high-born. And the challenge he throws to them becomes detrimental to Karna himself. He says:

Now watch the prowess of a pupil of The dread Bhargava even though he be A low-born suta.¹

The last words of his challenge remind Karna of his curse and paralyse his powers and prowess. He returns to his ownself and again becomes a friend of Duryodhana. The Brahmin's curse once again leaves its impact on Karna, who for his valour and virtues commands compliments from Draupadi:

Thou art, in sooth, some strary ray of Some strange, strange star that hath, by some Mishap, astrayed into this sinful world!2

Kailasam develops the character of Karna by and by through his certain dramatic innovations and digressions. It is Karna's character that receives appreciation from Draupadi who discloses her identity as under:

Ye all think I am naught but A fragile, helpless woman! why I that was A woman once, am not a woman now! I am but flame..A flame begat of hate! A flame brought forth to burn this house Of cold moon!³

Another dramatic invention of Kailasam is that the depicts Bheema springing like a panther on Karna to tear him to pieces for not using his brahmastra to finish the house of Kuru. Karna solemnly faces the situation and requests for pity in the following manner:

Bear with me, Vrikodara! What stayed my hand from slaying thee on the day Of Pariksha; what numb'd mine arm on the day Of Panchali's swayamvara; what paralyz'd Mine arm and did stop me from rescuing her From clutch of human brute was but relentless. curse Of dread Rama! Pity me, the helpless victim of a Brahmin's curse!!

 Act  5 

In Act V Kuntee, the virgin mother of Karna appears. before him to request him not use serpent shaft against the Pandavas. She, contrary to the original epic, does not disclose her identity² but reveals that he is not a suta's son, but a prince. This revelation may be a great relief to one who has so far been humiliated several times only for his low-birth. He before committing anything to Kuntee, is confronted with his foster mother Radha, who asks him to stick to his loyalty to the King. Duryodhana who has made him a man and ensured an honorable position for him in society. He unhesitatingly sides with Duryodhana and fights against the Pandavas who are protected by Lord Krishna. And he is engaged in a lost battle. Throughout his life Karna cannot make any use of the knowledge of arms that he has received from Parasurama because of his curse. When he is in the battlefield and fighting bravely, another Brahmin's curse starts working on him. 

When a student, near the ashram he unwittingly kills a sacrificial cow belonging to a learned Brahmin who curses him that Karna's chariot wheel will be swallowed by the earth when he will be fiercely comparing on the battlefield to kill his enemy. The same happens when he is engaged in a fierce fight with his avowed enemy Arjuna.¹ Karna tries hard to take the wheel out of the earth and asks Arjuna in the name of Dharma not to attack him in this condition. But Krishna throws upon him a series of questions and asks him when he has observed Dharma: 'Now, do you remember Dharma; generally the depraved, steeper in distress, chastise their fate but never their own bad deeds. You did not remember Dharma when Draupadi was dragged to the court by you, Duryodhana, Dusshasana and Sakuni. Where did your sense of dharma go when you very well knew how Yudhisthira, ignorant of the game, was defeated by Sakuni? Where was your sense of dharma when the Kuruavas did not give back the kingdom of the Pandavas when the thirteen years of vanavasa had elapsed? When Bheemsena was tortured by poisonous shakes and fed with poisonous food where was your sense of dharma? Where was your dharma when the wax house was set on fire, with the Pandavas sleeping within? When Draupadi, even in her menstrual days, stood mastered by Dusshasana and was ridiculed in the sabha, where was your sense of dharma? When the Pandavas stood the lovely Draupadi with the statement, "your husband are gone to perpetual hell; find another husbands," and you connived at the deed of slighted her, where did your dharma go? When you greedy for a kingdom and siding with Sakuni, challenged the Pandavas, where did your dharma go? Where did your dharma go when you, alongwith several heroes, encircled and killed the boy Abhimanyu?.." These arguments of Krishna in the original Mahabharata hold the same significance that the Brahmin's curse in Kailasam's play. In both the situations Karna's head is hung in shame, depression and frustration. In the end, at the instance of Krishna, Arjuna kills  Karna. 

Conclusion 

The Curse or Karna is a tragedy, described by the author himself as "an impression of Sophocles in five acts." In this play Karna undergoes troubles and tension like Oedipus in sophocles's Oedipus Rex. The thematic materials of this play of Kailasam are gathered from mythology. Its tragic atmosphere of and mythological materials collectively contribute to the artistic excellence of the play. In the Greek sense of the term, tragedy is a new genre in Indian dramatic writing and, therefore, the spirit of tragedy has to be carefully injected into the mythological substance.

Citation 

Google. (n.d.). Indian English drama. Google Books. Retrieved September 22, 2021, from https://books.google.co.in/books?id=9j7CbYk-IMIC&pg=PA99&lpg=PA99&dq=The%2Bcurse%2Bor%2Bkarna%2Bby%2Bt.p.%2Bkailasam&source=bl&ots=XNEViBDMTN&sig=ACfU3U0dTfZpi9hYCOzcJ46wqI5B-nBMIQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjE36Pt-5LzAhUxH7cAHRaiDbkQ6AF6BAglEAI#v=onepage&q=The%20curse%20or%20karna%20by%20t.p.%20kailasam&f=false. 

Thinking Activity:Digital Humanities

 

Hello Readers!

Welcome to my blog. This blog is about thinking activity of Digital Humanities. We have one unit about Digital Humanities in which we will have done course of Introduction of Digital Humanities from EDX HARVARD. After that we have to done one thematic activity from CLIC Activity book. This task was given by Dr. Dilip Barad Bhavnagar University.

Chapter 1 

• Library collection and the research journey part1

A library is often the first place, or among the first places, that you might turn to when looking for data and other sources that you want to incorporate into your research. Libraries face many new and exciting challenges today as they grapple with how to help researchers produce digital scholarship, and how they will store and disseminate that digital scholarship when it's finished. 

We want to introduce you to some of the ways in which libraries approach these questions and challenges. At the same time, and as you will see, these questions are often approached collaboratively and in conversation between library staff and researchers. These videos show a conversation between Laura Wood, Associate University Librarian for Research and Education, and Stephen Osadetz, Assistant Professor of English. Think about the ways in which you might call upon library staff or library collections as you pursue your own research interests.

• Art museum collection part one

Similar to libraries, art museums face many unique and interesting questions about how to create and store digital scholarship. As you will see in the following videos, many times the digital scholarship conducted within a museum is done in the spirit of creating new meaning or providing new connections between viewers and art objects. In many cases, data about museum collections provides new meaning, or reveal otherwise hidden meaning, about an individual piece of art or an entire collection of art.

• What is Data?

A simplified picture of the traditional way academics work with information is that we have our sources, which we collect, study, and interpret. Then, we write the results, which we publish as articles or books. A digital scholarship workflow looks similar. You have sources in the form of data that you have to acquire, analyze, and interpret. Then, you present the results in the form of books, but also website visualizations or some other electronic medium.

Digital methods are not without their challenges, though. Oftentimes, for instance, researchers will start a project and only realize part-way into their work that they need to visualize their data digitally. For people in this situation, acquiring data can be a problem if the data they use is not in a format that can easily be translated to something digitally useful.

When it comes to data science work, the vast majority of your time is spent managing data. Likewise, researchers embarking on a digital scholarship project often find that much of their time is spent cleaning up data and ensuring that they accurately understand what the data is representing. For instance, if a researcher is dealing with a million rows of tabular data that have been collected over years, there are often differences between entries that will need to be reconciled in order to perform large-scale analyses. Examples of this could include the formatting of dates or the abbreviation of names.

                        Chepter   2 

👉Introduction to lesson 2

DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECTS, TOOLS, AND QUESTIONS THEY SUPPORT

List tools of data analysis that can be applied to text in any language, space, networks, images, and statistical analysis. Evaluate existing digital platforms based on features that can be used for data analysis within such fields as literature, history, art, and music.  

• Product visualizing Boardway

This lesson's major focus is showing you in more detail how specific people created and delivered their own digital humanities projects. The examples in this section include a discussion about each project and then a demonstration of some of the tools that were used to create that project.

As you learn more about these projects and their corresponding tools, keep in mind tools or ideas that you might find useful to your own work and interests.

• Tool for Network Analysis-Gephi

Derek Miller will now show and discuss one of the tools that he used in his project Visualizing Broadway, which is called Gephi. This tool is used to perform network analysis on a dataset. Network analysis is one very common digital humanities research method.

• Tool for text analysis 

In this series of videos you will learn about the Text Encoding Initiative External link External link(TEI), and the XML framework that allows for the mark-up and display of text in various online formats. TEI and XML will be described in the context of medieval manuscripts, which can be analyzed in many ways once they are encoded digitally using XML tagging.

One of the main characteristics of this type of tagging is the format for the "open" and "closed" tags. A closed tag is a repeat of the open tag with a "/" at the beginning. Because these tags do not include additional instructions that tell a computer how to display the content within the tags, additional lines of code, called "CSS," are added to control how the text looks on a given webpage. CSS stands for cascading style sheets. Keep an eye out for this structure within the videos. XML files will also be discussed further in Lesson 3.

• Tools for Geospatial Analysis 

Humanists make maps for the same reason those in public health, public policy, and urban development make maps. They make maps because they believe that the “where” matters and our job as humanists is to explain why where matters. This section will give you a sense of the process of taking humanistic information sources that you're used to working with, such as letters, documents from archives, imperial decrees, travel accounts, postcards, historical maps themselves, and transforming that familiar material into data, and specifically into spatial data. This process often strikes many humanists as the least familiar and perhaps the least comfortable part of the process. And that's because you're taking something that is complex and nuanced and you are separating it out into its constituent parts and it can feel a bit reductive. But you can also think of it as the process of distillation or a disaggregation, of identifying all of the pieces that make your source complex and identifying them separating them out so that we can either put them right back together again in the same way or build something new with them.

The process is complex and it's important to keep in mind three major rules of data organization. These are transparency, consistency, and the most important, the golden rule, one piece of information in each cell of your spatial data. If you follow those rules and if you're consistent and transparent in your method you will create beautiful spatial data and you will eventually find answers to the question, “Why does where matter?”

• More Digital humanities projects examples 

• Cleveland Historical

Cleveland Historical External linkis a free mobile app that showcases historic people, places, and moments in Cleveland, Ohio. The app incorporates layered, map-based, multimedia presentations. And the tours have been created by a variety of groups and individuals all contributing their curated tour to the app. This mobile app is one of a few projects created by the Cleveland State University Center for Public History + Digital Humanities External link.

• Digital Transgender Archive

The purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) External link is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world. Based in Worcester, Massachusetts at the College of the Holy Cross, the DTA is an international collaboration among more than fifty colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, public libraries, and private collections. By digitally localizing a wide range of trans-related materials, the DTA expands access to trans history for academics and independent

                  Chapter 3

👉Introduction to Lesson 3

• ACQUIRING, CLEANING, AND CREATING DATA

• Understanding Shapes of Data 

You may be thinking about this idea "the shapes of data" for the first time. All this really means is that the structure around words and numbers can enable different types of analysis by either a human or a computer reading the text. Read on to learn about the three major categories: unstructured, structured, and semi-structured data.

• Unstructured Data

Unstructured data is data that is not organized into distinct, pre-defined semantic units. Typically, this means textual data, which could be a written account, literary work, newspaper article, or anything else represented as text. Human beings can process unstructured data by reading it, understanding its contents, and making inferences using context and common sense – all tasks which are extremely difficult for computers. Unstructured data is hard for computers to process in meaningful ways.

• Example:

George Washington was the first President of the United States, serving from April 30th, 1789 through March 4, 1797. He was succeeded by John Adams, who remained president until 1801, standing down on March the 4th.

• Structured Data

Structured data is data organized according to some particular data model, which explicitly defines the structure of the data. For example, key data about the presidents of the United States might be structured according to a model requiring that, for each president, we record:

Because this data is structured, any software processing can – and should – assume that each row of the table represents one individual president. Additionally, software can assume that the data in the “Took office” column is always one single date (as opposed to say a number, or name, or description, or time of day) representing the date that the president took office. This makes structured data easy to process. For instance, we could immediately calculate the length of time each president was in office by subtracting the date “Took office” from “Left office” in each row. This simple operation would be far harder to perform computationally on unstructured data, even if it contained all of the same information.

• DataSemi-structured Data

Semi-structured data is data which does not conform to a formal data model, but uses formal constructs to indicate separate semantic elements within the data. One method of indicating semantic elements is by adding special codes, or “markup,” to what is otherwise unstructured text. For example, we could add pairs of codes like “<name>” and “</name>” around each occurrence of a proper name, and “<date>” and “</date>” around each occurrence of a date to make some aspects of an otherwise unstructured document more easily processable computationally. This approach can be used to avoid ambiguities and appeals to context and common sense when processing content written in natural languages like English. In the following example, note how the “<date>” codes add an additional element representing each date in a common standardized form:

<name>George Washington</name> was the first president of the <placeName>United States</placeName>, serving from <date when="1789-04-30">April 30th, 1789</date> through <date when="1797-03-04">March 4, 1797</date>. He was succeeded by <name>John Adams</name>, who remained president until <date when="1801">1801</date>, standing down on <date when="1801-03-04">March the 4th</date>.

Although not as simple to process as structured data, semi-structured data can be used to add information to unstructured data that allows for effective processing in many applications

• Shape of Data Summary 

There are three broad categories of data: structured, unstructured, and semi-structured. Data that is organized according to an explicit, well-defined data model is called structured data. Unstructured data has no distinct, pre-defined units. Data that does not conform to a data model, but uses formal constructs, such as mark-up codes to indicate internal semantic elements, is called semi-structured data.

• Unit 3.3 File types and definition

• Understanding file types 

• File Types and Definitions

Data can be stored in a variety of different file types. Read on to learn about the major file types that you will encounter in Digital Humanities projects, along with the advantages and limitations of using each one. Specifically, we will cover plain text, CSV, Text, JSON, HTML, XML, Binary, MP3, and WAV file types.

• HTML

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a format used to represent complex documents. For instance, the vast majority of web pages are primarily represented in HTML. Based upon the foundation of plain text, and unlike data-centric formats such as JSON, HTML uses a document-focused approach in which markup, meaning special codes representing additional information, is added to what is essentially a plain text document. In HTML, these codes primarily consist of tags, which are pieces of code providing additional data to elements of a document.

Tags in HTML are always enclosed between the two symbols “<” and “>”, and normally come in pairs: an opening tag and a corresponding closing tag. The sequence of characters appearing immediately after the opening or closing symbols specifies the type of element being described. Different elements are used to express different types of information. In HTML, elements are often closely used to convey formatting information. For example, the “b” element causes whatever text that appears within these two tags to be displayed in bold. Opening tags can also contain additional data in attribute-value pairs. Closing tags always have the same element type as the corresponding opening tag. In addition to representing general formatting information, an important use of tags in HTML is to provide machine-readable references to other documents. In particular, hyperlinks, represented using the “a” element, contain an attribute specifying a reference to another web document, and are displayed by a web browser as clickable links directing the user to the specified location.

• Binary Files

File types can be separated into two classes: text-based formats, and binary (i.e. non-text-based) formats. Text-based formats represent their contents on the most basic level as a sequence of characters; binary formats typically use a mixture of representations for storing data. The two are easily distinguished in practice: when viewed in a text editor, the contents of any text-based format file will appear as a coherent mixture of characters and a relatively small number of codes. By contrast, any file in a binary format when opened in a text editor will typically display large amounts of garbled, unintelligible material, if it can be opened at all.

Binary files represent their contents using methods other than character encodings. For example, whereas a text file containing the content “123” will consist of numbers representing a sequence of characters “1”, then “2”, then “3” using an encoding such as UTF-8, resulting in a sequence of numbers each representing one of these three characters, a binary file will instead often represent the numeric value 123 directly as a number. Because this representation is different from any character encoding, a text editor typically cannot display the content in a meaningful way regardless of which character encoding is used. A binary file generally requires special software designed to process the specific format of the binary file.

• Unit 3.4 Way of creating data

Introduction to Digital Data creation 

Digital Humanities data is often generated from physical, analog sources. For instance, if you wanted to digitize a rare book from the 16th century, you might retrieve the physical book, photograph the pages, and perform optical character recognition (OCR) to recognize written characters and transform the images into a text file format. In this lesson, we will explore several different modes of digitization that are common within the Digital Humanities, ranging from text digitization to archaeological artifact digitization, along with examples of their use.

Digitizing Objects 

Many humanities practitioners, such as archaeologists and art historians, study the broader world of objects that humans create, as well as their texts. Such objects may include the pictures people take, the physical artworks they produce, or the everyday utilitarian objects they use. Digital Humanities practitioners may want to digitize objects for a variety of reasons. For instance, some practitioners seek to understand the properties of objects at an aggregate or statistical scale via computational strategies. In this case, digitization of objects might involve collecting tabular data that contains measurements about an artifact and digitally representing it in a relational database.

Others digitize objects so as to present them to broader audiences. The objects they seek to represent, for instance, may be at risk of being destroyed and necessitate digital preservation at the very least. Additionally, objects in museums may only be accessible to a small group of people, making it necessary to digitize the objects in order to share them more broadly with the world. For the purposes of presentation, it is often most effective to take high resolution 2-dimensional images, or 3-dimensional scans of the objects, so they may be experienced in similar ways as the original analog artifact.

Digitizing Audio/visual information 

Whether they study live music, or seek to visually capture the human experience, other digital humanities practitioners digitally record information about the world around them via images, video, and audio. It might also be necessary to convert analog forms (i.e. paper photographs, tapes, or vinyl records) to digital in order to allow for unique digital analyses of these different forms. Digital forms also facilitate the presentation to (and preservation for) new audiences through popular services such as YouTube. Furthermore, high-resolution scans of images, or digital representation of audio and video may allow researchers to teach machine learning models to identify particular features in the data that the human eye/ear could not detect or broad-scale patterns that would be time-consuming to identify manually.

Example:

One example of digitizing audio/visual information is making a documentary film, to record visual and audio information, or podcast, to record audio, about an experience or topic. Alternatively, digitizing a historical film to preserve the film and present it to new audiences on the YouTube platform is another example of digitizing audio/visual information.

Unit 3 . 5 Getting Data

Different way of getting data

There are a variety of different ways to get Digital Humanities data. In this unit of the course, we will explore several of the most common approaches. For instance, we will discuss how to identify online data repositories and download data from them. We will also discuss how you might access data stored in relational databases, as well as data accessible via Web APIs. For those cases where online data is not easily accessible via APIs or repository downloads, we additionally discuss the use of web scraping to get data. Finally, at the end of the unit, you will have the opportunity to practice getting structured data about books via the Google Books API.

• Unit 3.6 Digital Ethics 

 Copyright 

All researchers should understand the basics of copyright and intellectual property, and the following videos aim to provide those basics. From the perspective of data and other source material that you want to use in your digital humanities project, to how you want to publish or share your project with others, there are a wide variety of copyright considerations that will be helpful for you to know about.

      

                        Chepter   4 

👉Introduction to Lesson 4

THE COMMAND LINE

A Command-Line Interface or command language interpreter (CLI), also known as command-line user interface, console user interface and character user interface (CUI), is a means of interacting with a computer program where the user (or client) issues commands to the program in the form of successive lines of text (command lines). A program which handles the interface is called a command language interpreter or shell.

A shell prompt indicates that the terminal is ready to receive a command. This prompt is typically shown as a dollar sign, $. You type a command after the shell prompt.

A command is an action that you want your computer to carry out, and it is often abbreviated using just a few letters, such as mkdr for the command to make a new directory.

A directory is a folder or taxonomy of files saved in a specific location on your computer. Files saved on your computer's desktop, for example, are saved in the desktop directory.

A file system refers to the way in which files are named, stored, and retrieved within your computer. File systems can differ across Mac, Windows, and Linux-based operating systems. File systems also include metadata about files such as date created, date modified, last date of access, last backup, file size, and access permissions.

Unit 4.2 Introduction to command line functions 

Optional installing a virtual machine 

If you would like to experiment using the command line, one option is to install a virtual machine running Ubuntu, a free Linux operating system (for more information about the operating system, consult the online manual here). The videos in this lesson are based on this Ubuntu operating system. If you try to use these command line functions within a different operating system (Mac or Windows, for example) some of the necessary commands may be different than what you see in the videos.

This step is not required for answering most of the graded questions in this lesson. Nearly all graded questions can be answered by watching the videos. In previous versions of this course, we attempted to guide all students through the Ubuntu installation so that the command line interface would be the same for everyone. Due to updates in the software, however, this became overly complicated.

If you use a Mac operating system, you can access the terminal window by searching for "terminal" on your computer.

                              Chepter   5 

 👉Introduction to Lesson 5

 Working with tools voyant

• Introduction to Voyant

The command line and other programmatic tools are useful for automating batch operations, manipulating files, automatically writing to spreadsheets, customizing summary statistics, and any number of programmatic tasks. However, there are easier ways to calculate standard summary statistics and create great visualizations for your text analyses.

Voyant Tools (voyant-tools.org), for instance, is a free online tool that automatically calculates summary statistics for large bodies of text data. Voyant also provides an interface for extending these calculations with visualizations, such as word clouds and bar charts, to display your findings. While not as customizable as the command line or another programmatic interface, Voyant provides most of the tools you need for an exploratory analysis of text data, either at the individual text or corpus level.

Q. 2  Complete one thematic activity from CLIC Activity book. Write your Interpolations. 

CLiC (Corpus Linguistics in Context) is a web app specifically designed for the corpus linguistic study of literary texts. While CLiC shares much of its functionality with other corpus tools — similarly to what is described in the Programming Historian’s lesson ‘Corpus Analysis with AntConc’ — it also contains additional features that are particularly relevant to literary analysis. These include the ability to search subsets of the text – such as character speech – and a sorting function that goes beyond alphabetic sorting: the ‘KWICGrouper’, which this post focuses on. The CLiC web app has been developed as part of the CLiC Dickens project for the analysis of patterns in 19th century fiction, particularly novels by Charles Dickens. CLiC currently contains 15 Dickens novels and 29 novels by other 19th century authors and a corpus of 19th century children’s literature will soon be added.

👉Activity 13.1 The social importance of the fire-place

1. Search for fire in DNov (Dickens’s Novels) in “All text”. This should give you over

1700 hits – too many to analyse in detail so that it’s best to use the

KWICGrouper for narrowing down the search.

2. Use the KWICGrouper and left-right sorting to search through the

concordance. First set the “Search in span” from L5 to L1 by dragging the

slider. Next “Search for types” by typing in back. Hit Return.

3. You should see a highlighted set of concordance lines showing phrases such

as back to the fire, like the one below.

Let's start with a simple concordance of Fire in Dickens 's novels in CLIC. This gives us an overview of how the word is used : see concordance 1. (Fireplace is, curiously, much less frequent and used in a different way!)

This will give you a set of concordance lines. In this activity we come to know about the words and it's frequency. 

Citation 

Course. edX. (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://learning.edx.org/course/course-v1:HarvardX+DigHum_01+2T2021/home. 

Google. (n.d.). Digital humanities kirschenbaum_ade150.pdf. Google Drive. Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Iq5T2ghtV15YdarHhlRIDME1Opliktdu/view?usp=sharing. 

Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, September 8). Digital humanities. Wikipedia. Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities.