Throughout these past few weeks, I can proudly state that I have developed both a greater appreciation for and understanding of digital humanities projects. This I believe stemmed from Dr. Esprit’s live demonstration of digital tools such as Voyant Tools, Twine, and ArGIS and my own personal work in completing project reviews of the RSHHGG Lab, The Viral Text Project, and Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760 – 1761.

This greater confidence, however, did not dissuade the onset of apprehension that I felt when tasked with presenting my own individual project proposal. At that point in time, my only desire was to select a topic that I deemed feasible but I had not an iota of an idea as to what I planned to do. Thus, my plea to Dr. Esprit to suggest some possible project ideas which she did not disappoint in doing. Particularly, her suggestion about addressing the themes in Caribbean Literature really piqued my interest.

As a result, I continued my work on data cleaning the “Author” and “Translator’s Name” columns of the spreadsheet but I ensured to place a greater emphasis on acknowledging the content of various rows. I paid more attention to the titles of books, and the authors who wrote them. Any particular title that may have interested me was noted, along with the author. Names such as V.S. Naipaul and Jamaica Kincaid were strong contenders but I became quite intimidated by the volume of work produced by the two. It was at that point where I deemed it necessary to settle on a time period and given that I had prior experience with working within the 1980s, I felt it only fitting.

While it remains to be seen whether this time period is the most ideal, I nevertheless adapted my perusal of the spreadsheet to include publication dates within that period. Thus came my interest in learning more about Kamau Brathwaite. From reading quick summaries about some of his work, I immediately noticed that they possessed a strong historical emphasis which got me very excited because I knew that my project would address the themes of the books.

Then I began thinking more about the digital tool that I wished to utilize in bringing my budding project idea to life. Without any hesitancy, I knew that I wanted to use Voyant due to its visualization capabilities of books’ topics. However, I was a bit concerned about my ability to access open access versions of Brathwaite’s books but it is my hope that sites such as the Internet Archive and secondary analytical text on his work may perhaps be able to help me in this regard. Additionally, based on Megan R. Brett’s “Topic Modeling: A Basic Introduction”, I know that “familiarity with the corpus” is a major aspect of topic modeling and consequently I will be required to gain a solid understanding of Brathwaite’s written work during the 1980s over the coming weeks, whether that be through reading primary or secondary texts, even before any visualizations can be conducted in Voyant.

All in all, despite being apprehensive about developing a project idea, I have had a great experience coming up with one and cannot wait to see my idea take shape.