In Introduction to Digital Humanities, we analyzed the Grimm’s Fairy Tales using the topic modeling tool MALLET and developed an 1.5-hour workshop for student scholars in the humanities.
Not only did we choose our data for its built-in divisions but because these stories are a part of the collective unconscious, popularized by Disney and well known by many. Discerning meaningfulness is easier if the user already has ideas or opinions about a dataset. Even if one has never heard of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the archetypes such as the hero’s journey and the evil stepmother are universal symbols in literature, which makes these stories so powerful. Our job as critical scholars is to problematize and question “unconscious” content. Do archetypal patterns ignore certain communities, or encourage stereotypes? Such as women are damsels in distress or evil witches while men become heroes?
