MeMo – Measuring Modernity: Literary and Social Change in Scandinavia 1870-1900
The project aims to investigate reflections of societal change in Scandivian literature from the latter part of the 19th century. By combining people and computers, historical interpretation and computational algorithms, the project offers new insights into how Denmark and Scandinavia became modern, and what the role of literature was in that process.
In the latter part of the 19th century Scandinavian societies underwent profound structural changes, encompassing numerous, interlocking areas: demography, infrastructure, morals, culture, etc. Through state-of-the-art computational techniques for literary analysis and critical interpretation based on theoretical and historical expertise, this project aims to explore how Scandinavian literature represented a cultural reflection of these transformations.
As opposed to traditional historiography on the period, which has focused on selected texts by a few prominent, male authors, our digital corpus comprises some 900 Danish and Norwegian novels published between 1870-1900, with rich metadata on texts and authors. This allow for the capturing of robust literary and sociological trends and for new insights into the processes of modernization in this formative period in the literary and social history of Scandinavia.
To this corpus we thus ask questions such as: How did this breakthrough of new ways of thinking and writing actually unfold? Who were the actors? And to what extent did the new relate to literature at large?
Dorthe Duncker, professor, University of Copenhagen
Fotis Jannidis, professor, Julius-Maximilians-Universität of Würzburg
Lasse Horne Kjældgaard, professor, University of Southern Denmark
Ellen Rees, professor, University of Oslo
Christian Dahl, associate professor, University of Copenhagen
Centre for Digital Humanities, University of Gothenburg
2025
Unhappy Texts? A Gendered and Computational Rereading of The Modern Breakthrough, Kirstine Nielsen Degn, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Ali Mohammed Ali Al-Laith, Daniel Hershcovich, 2025.
Guldet i guldalderen og T’et i GPT: Om H.C. Andersens sociale engagement og sprogmodellernes litterære beredskab, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Alexander Conroy, 2025.
Dying or Departing? Euphemism Detection for Death Discourse in Historical Texts, Ali Mohammed Ali Al-Laith, Alexander Conroy, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Bolette Sandford Pedersen, Carsten Levisen, Daniel Hershcovich, 2025.
Danske sprog- og litteraturmodeller?, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Alexander Conroy, 2025.
Annotating and Classifying Direct Speech in Historical Danish and Norwegian Literary Texts, Ali Mohammed Ali Al-Laith, Alexander Conroy, Kirstine Nielsen Degn, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Daniel Hershcovich, 2025.
Hvor langt skal vi fra teksten? Om ordbøger, AI og verbalkommentarer, Alexander Conroy, 2025.
2024
Noise, Novels, Numbers: A Framework for Detecting and Categorizing Noise in Danish and Norwegian Literature, Ali Mohammed Ali Al-Laith, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Daniel Hershcovich, Jakob Ingemann Parby, Timothy Tangherlini, Alexander Conroy, 2024.
Literary Time Travel: Distinguishing Past and Contemporary Worlds in Danish and Norwegian Fiction, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Ali Mohammed Ali Al-Laith, Sebastian Ørtoft Rasmussen, Daniel Hershcovich, Alexander Conroy, 2024.
Development and Evaluation of Pre-trained Language Models for Historical Danish and Norwegian Literary Texts, Ali Al-Laith, Alexander Conroy, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Daniel Hershcovich, 2024.
Romaner og sprogmodeller: Kvantitative studier af modernitetsprocesser i dansk og norsk litteratur 1870-1899, Alexander Conroy, 2024.
Tekster om (u)lykke: En digital og postkritisk undersøgelse af romaner skrevet af Det Moderne Gennembruds Kvinder, Kirstine Nielsen Degn, 2024.
2023
Deep distant reading: The rise of realism in Scandinavian literature as a case study, Jens Bjerring-Hansen & Matthew Wilkens, 2023.
Littteratursociologi og kvantitative litteraturstudier: Den historiske roman i det moderne gennembrud som case, Jens Bjerring-Hansen & Sebastian Ørtoft Rasmussen, 2023.
Sentiment Classification of Historical Danish and Norwegian Literary Texts, Ali Mohammed Ali Al-Laith, Kirstine Nielsen Degn, Alexander Conroy, Bolette Sandford Pedersen, Jens Bjerring-Hansen & Daniel Hershcovich, 2023.
2022
Mending Fractured Texts: A Heuristic Procedure for Correcting OCR data, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Ross Deans Kristensen-McLachlan, Philip Diderichsen & Dorte Haltrup Hansen, 2022.
2021
Measuring Modernity: Tentative remarks on a digital exploration of the 'modern breakthrough', Jens Bjerring-Hansen & Alexander Conroy, 2021.
Books: in: Mads Rosendahl Thomsen et al (ed.): in: Digital Literary Studies – A Companion Guide, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, 2021.
2025
15 - 16 December
Seminar: Old Texts, New Tools, Changing Questions. Computational Literary Studies in the AI Era
6 November
Workshop: Data Sprint: Følelser, smag og litterær kultur
6 March
Presentation: Modeling Modernity
15 January
Presentation: AI, tekstlæsning og de danskstuderendes værktøjskasse
2024
5 - 6 August
Conference presentation: At fjernlæse følelser: digitale metoder, affektteori og postkritik
31 May
Seminar presentation: Det sekulære gennembrud?
10 May
Conference presentation: Modeling Marriage in late 19th Century Literature
2023
14 December
Seminar presentation: Skæbnesvangre ægteskaber. Kvantitative perspektiver på ægteskabsbegrebet i det moderne gennembrud
16 November
Seminar presentation: “Why the hell not?” Om litteraturhistoriske læsemåder
2 - 5 August
Conference presentation: Unhappy texts? A quantitative and gendered re-assessment of The Modern Breakthrough
27 April
Guest lecture, University of Washington: Georg Brandes: Comparative Literature Pioneer and Global Public Intellectual
20 March
Guest lecture, Brigham Young University: Measuring Modernity
4 February
Guest lecture, UC Berkeley: Making Sense of 900 Novels
2022
17 November
Guest lecture, UC Berkeley: Conceptualizing Modernity
9 November
Guest lecture, Uppsala universitet: Litterær forandring og datadreven analyse
6 - 9 September
Conference presentation: Den ulykkelige tekst: En digital fjernlæsning af romaner fra Det Moderne Gennembrud med fokus på kønsperspektiver
6 September
Conference presentation: Skæbnens modernitet?
27 - 29 June
MeMo workshop: Tracking the not-mentioned-but-somehow-present
14 June
Seminar presentation: Fjernlæsning og litteratursociologi: Den historiske roman som eksempel
24 May
Conference presentation: Kvindelige forfatterskaber under Det Moderne Gennembrud set med et digitalt blik
18 March
Conference presentation: Quantifying Conceptual History?
2021
3 November
Conference organiser: Georg Brandes’ ”Hovedstrømninger” – 150 år
23-24 August
Workshop: MeMo Workshop: Basic analysis and quantification
30 August
Seminar presentation: Kvantitative perspektiver på Det moderne gennembruds romaner
5 June
Panel member: When Denmark Became Modern
7 May
Conference presentation: Measuring Modernity: Tentative remarks on a digital exploration of the ‘modern breakthrough’.
19 May
Panel discussion: Konstruksjonen av Norden: Det moderne gjennombrudd.
22 January
Kickoff meeting.
Researchers
Internal
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Al-Laith, Ali Mohammed Ali | Assistant Professor | +4535326658 | |
| Bjerring-Hansen, Jens | Associate Professor - Promotion Programme | +4535331905 | |
| Conroy, Alexander | Research Assistant | +4535327481 | |
| Jelsbak, Torben | Associate Professor | +4535331224 | |
| Pedersen, Bolette Sandford | Professor, Deputy Head of Department | +4535329078 |
External
Carsten Levisen, associate professor, Roskilde University
Matthew Wilkens, associate professor, Cornell
Timothy Tangherlini, professor, UC Berkeley
Other staff
Dorte Haltrup Hansen, academic research staff
Kirstine Nielsen Degn, student intern (2022)
Philip Diderichsen, special consultant
Sebastian Ørtoft Rasmussen, student intern (2021)
Funding
Project period: 1 January 2021 - 31 December 2025
PI: Jens Bjerring-Hansen, associate professor
E-mail: jbh@hum.ku.dk
Phone: +45 35 33 19 05
Mobile: +45 40 95 10 85