Spatial itineraries and political identities: “The Troubles” in contemporary fiction

On Monday, February 13th, Simone Abiatti, PhD candidate in Transcultural Studies in the Humanities at the University of Bergamo, and currently a visiting scholar with the Literary Lab, presented on 'Spatial itineraries and political identities: “The Troubles” in contemporary fiction.'

Spatial itineraries and political identities: “The Troubles” in contemporary fiction

Drawing upon Jameson's concept of cognitive mapping, Simone is examining how the itineraries of characters in novels dealing with the Troubles (the ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland) can be interpreted as a manifestation of political identity. Utilizing tools from computational linguistics, including topic modeling, named entity recognition, and automatic recognition of syntactic dependencies, Simone is first constructing a literary corpus pertaining to the Troubles. He will then reflect on the automatic retrieval of character itineraries, and subsequently reflect on the itinerary as a symbol. He will focus on how crossing borders, fleeing from areas affected by terror attacks, or traveling to places where one's loved ones reside, can help reflect the complexity of the war.