Navigating In-Betweens: Close- and Distant Reading in the Digital

My thesis aims to address the space between close and distant reading strategies using the program Voyant Tools to supplement my literary analysis of Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929). With a focus on the environment and selfhood as they are represented in the modernist novel, I work towards bridging the two techniques in one process to demonstrate the ways in which they overlap. The post-war environment of the text becomes key to understanding the ways in which the ever-changing society impacts people's identities as they come into increasing contact with a developing, modern city. To best analyze the way in which Döblin's constructed atmospheres relate to modernist selfhood, my work explores the in-betweens of environment and identity. By doing so, this project constructs a new perspective in understanding how digital humanities supplements English studies.