Natalie M. Houston

@nmhouston
521 Followers
689 Following
67 Posts
Current research: distant reading 19thc poetry | Assoc Prof, U Mass Lowell | digital humanities, Victorian literature, 19thc periodicals | holistic personal productivity coach for academics, people with ADD |
webhttps://nmhouston.com/
recent publicationhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110781502-007
Periodical Poetry Indexhttp://periodicalpoetry.org/
Natalie M. HoustonApr 12, 2023
Looking forward to visiting UNL this week as part of their Uncommon DH Critic series to give a talk on "13 Ways to Look at a Poem: Descriptive Modeling for Computational Criticism." https://dh.unl.edu/#:~:text=The%20Uncommon%20DH%20Critic%20series%20is%20a%20new%20initiative%20led,of%20the%20university's%20DH%20community.
Digital Humanities | Nebraska

Natalie M. HoustonMar 20, 2023
Ted UnderwoodMar 19, 2023
Blog post comparing #GPT4 to other forms of text analysis. tl;dr: Yes, it's more accurate, but the real advantage is that it thinks out loud and can argue with you. #LLM #AI @dh https://tedunderwood.com/2023/03/19/using-gpt-4-to-measure-the-passage-of-time-in-fiction/
Using GPT-4 to measure the passage of time in fiction

Large language models are valuable research assistants, especially when they refuse to follow instructions.

The Stone and the Shell
Natalie M. HoustonMar 13, 2023
I guess I was putting a lot of energy into teaching today...my Oura tracker detected that time as a workout!
Natalie M. HoustonMar 4, 2023
Konrad M. LawsonMar 4, 2023

I have deep concerns about the rise of large language models but am also interested in exploring concrete use cases on assumption they are here to stay.

One thing ChatGPT can do quite well is clean up messy table data. This is useful for historians working with complex tables in scanned historical documents. I offer an example in this post:

https://froginawell.net/frog/2023/03/cleaning-up-tables-from-primary-sources-in-chatgpt/

#chatgpt #LLMs #histodons #asianists

Cleaning Up Tables from Primary Sources in ChatGPT

I’ve been following with interest the debates around the rapid emergence of powerful large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, its Bing sibling Sydney, Meta’s Galactica, and…

Frog in a Well
Natalie M. HoustonFeb 21, 2023
Paul FyfeFeb 21, 2023
"Hard Times": the 2023 Victorians Institute opens its CFP for our fall conference in Raleigh, NC. See full details at link. Please submit and share! https://victoriansinstitute2023.wordpress.com/ #Victorian #cfp #C19
Hard Times: The 2023 Conference of the Victorians Institute

Hard Times
Natalie M. HoustonFeb 21, 2023
Ted UnderwoodFeb 20, 2023
This whole post by @benmschmidt is great, but this passage honestly should become *the* canonical way of thinking about #LLM and personality. It's better than the Shoggoth. https://benschmidt.org/post/2023-02-19-sydney/
You’ve never talked to a language model

Natalie M. HoustonFeb 19, 2023
CFP for MLA24:
The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) seeks proposals for a special session at the 2024 Modern Language Convention in Philadelphia, in keeping with the presidential theme of Celebration: Joy and Sorrow. We welcome abstracts of 250-400 words on any aspect of celebration and/or commemoration within the nineteenth-century periodical press. Abstracts & 1 page cv by Mar 13. List of suggested topics and all details here: https://rs4vp.org/cfp-rsvp-at-mla-2024/
Natalie M. HoustonFeb 17, 2023
Ted UnderwoodFeb 16, 2023
Everyone knows when you meet the fay folk, you don't eat the food. Maybe we need a similar set of mores about AI? E.g., don't talk to a model about Jung and ask whether it has a "shadow self." Nothing good will come of that.
Natalie M. HoustonFeb 15, 2023
Paul FyfeFeb 15, 2023
So the VICTORIA email listserv just turned 30 years old. Congrats @patrickleary . I wrote a short conference paper "Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Listserv" which nominates VICTORIA as the longest-running #DigitalHumanities project in #Victorian studies -- because of its emphasis on infrastructure and care. If you're interested: https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:51397/
Natalie M. HoustonJan 28, 2023
Ted UnderwoodJan 28, 2023
New article by Whitney Arnold & Corey Arnold topic-modeling The Monthly Review (1749-1844). @dh https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10509585.2022.2158460?needAccess=true
A Century of Literary Criticism: A Large-Scale Analysis of the Monthly Review

For almost 100 years, the Monthly Review documented literary history in Britain through its efforts to review every published text. Appearing monthly from 1749 to 1844, the periodical sheds light n...

Taylor & Francis