MITH is pleased to announce Lisa Rhody, doctoral candidate in the department of English at the University of Maryland, as the Winnemore Dissertation Fellow for Spring 2012. Rhody is completing her dissertation, “Ekphrastic Revisions: Models of Verbal-Visual Networks in Women’s Contemporary Poetry,” which theorizes a broader, more complex understanding of ekphrastic poetry—poems written to, for, or about works of visual art.
During the fellowship, Rhody will work on her final chapter “Review, Revise, Requery: New Methods for Studying Ekphrasis,” which argues that computational tools for text analysis can help scholars challenge existing assumptions about the genre’s tradition, tropes, and canon.
“I am thrilled to receive the Winnemore fellowship and look forward to working with MITH’s talented and knowledgeable team of graphic and web designers, programmers, and data curation specialists,” says Rhody. “MITH offers a wealth of digital humanities experience and success from which to draw lasting and meaningful lessons, affording my project a wider, deeper impact.”
Rhody’s study considers the unlikely popularity of contemporary ekphrastic poems, particularly those by female poets in the U.S., and theorizes a broader, more complex model to explain how the genre operates, including accounting for inter-aesthetic relationships historically labeled as outliers. Using advanced computational methods, her project challenges longstanding critical assumptions: that poets will ultimately comment on the stillness and muteness of the visual work of art; that ekphrastic speech turns upon the typically gendered axis of inter-arts rivalry; that descriptions of art and descriptions of nature in verse are indistinguishable in style and form.
By supporting the use of computational tools to read patterns of subjects and word choice across hundreds of modern poems, her project seeks to uncover new methodologies for asking traditional humanities questions—ones stretching back as far as Homer’s description of Achilles’ shield in The Illiad—from new perspectives and with fresh insight.
Welcome, Lisa! We are thrilled to have you.