Diarists as Readers:
Thick Journals and Literary Networks
in the Prozhito Data
Andrew Janco (Haverford College)
and Philip Gleissner (Ohio State)
Goals for This Unit
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Use Prozhito data to explore a concrete research problem in the field of literary history, namely the reception of thick journals.
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Illuminate the process of capturing and operationalizing data.
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Walk through the steps of an exploratory analysis of the data as networks and make first observations about the way Soviet readers perceived literary magazines.
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Learn the basics of social network analysis, using the online tool Palladio.
The Thick Journal
- monthly publications
- 150-250 pages
- circulation between 70,000 and 2,000,000
- literary texts (first publication), literary criticism, journalism
- sizable editorial teams
After 1956
- expansion of journals
- numerous new publications
- growth in press runs
- Question: What impact does this have on Soviet literature?
Research Problem
Journals and the Literary Field under Late Socialism
- Centrifugal forces and fragmentation of the field of literary journals
- Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, it becomes less likely for authors to publish in several journals.
- Some journals share more authors than others, i.e. some are more similar than others.
- Journals create competitive market for literature under the conditions of state socialism.
Soviet Journals Reconnected
- bibliographical data for six Moscow-based periodicals between 1956 and 1972 from Soviet Chronicle of Periodical Publications
- data parsing, normalization, and creation of database
- ca. 10,000 contributions and 3,000 authors
www.soviet-journals.org
From Bibliographical Data to the Literary Field
- idea: use bibliographical data to visualize and analyze the late socialist literary landscape
- key question: contribution of authors to literary magazines
- network: stuff (nodes) and connections between stuff (edges)
- a bimodal network graph
- Need more terminology? Check out Miriam Posner's network analysis glossary
The Landscape of Late Socialist Journals
- represent information as unimodal graph:
- edge = shared author
- edge weight = relative number of shared authors
Six Moscow-Based Journals between 1960 and 1964
- some journals share a larger pool of authors
- openness to each other's authors and aesthetic
- similarity in form and content
- ties decrease diachronically
From Cultural Production to Cultural Consumption
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Journals shared varying numbers of authors: social landscape of the field of literary production and similarities and differences between journals
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Over time, ties between journals in terms of shared authors grow weaker.
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Question: Does this matter to readers? Are we indeed watching a competitive market of cultural production AND consumption?
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Proposal: Trace literary reception in the diaries in the Prozhito archive. Which journals do diarists read and mention at the same time?
Step One: The Data
go.osu.edu/slavic_dh
Step One: The Data
go.osu.edu/slavic_dh
Step Two: Create a Network in Palladio
Step Three: Evaluate Data as Unimodal Graph
Learn to use Cytoscape with Miriam Posner's tutorial...
To Conclude
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Some of our preliminary observations are consistent with the fragmentation of literary production discussed in the beginning.
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Versatility of the journal Znamia.
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Mutual exclusivity of...
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Outsider position of...
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Next Steps:
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Return to qualitative analysis: journals referenced in a negative or positive way, in-depth or peripherally?
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Make sure the data is complete and weed out data that doesn’t fit, e.g. diaries of literary authors.
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By philipgleissner
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