Juan Luis Suárez

Collaborating, Connecting, and Clustering in the Humanities A Case Study of Networked Scholarship in an Interdisciplinary, Dispersed Team

To what extent does networked scholarship in the humanities parallel established models in the sciences? The present study examines the connections of a 7-year interdisciplinary, dispersed, collaborative network composed of 33 humanities scholars investigating the Hispanic Baroque. Our findings suggest that project membership leads to greater network density and integration, without necessarily increasing the level of in-depth collaboration typically found in the sciences. Hence, collaborative models in the humanities, while increasingly important, are distinct from their counterparts in the sciences. The study provides a more nuanced view of networked scholarship because it demonstrates that large-scale collaborative projects can yield a high level of integration of the overall network, while at the same time allowing for strong thematic clustering. This dual structural process is relevant because not all network members can form dense relations with one another. Furthermore, we identified that principal investigators showed different networking strategies.

Towards a digital geography of Hispanic Baroque art

In this article we propose an approach to the study of art history based on geography of Hispanic Baroque art by digital means that showcase the multiplicity of possible places of art. Our study advances four elements of a digital geography of art (communities, semantic maps, areas, and flows)—a methodology that can be expanded in future Digital Humanities research. .................................................................................................................................................................................

Evolving Creativity: An Analysis of the Creative Method in elBulli Restaurant

In this article we present an analysis of the creative method developed in the restaurant elBulli (www.elbulli.com) over the period 1987-2005. elBulli has been the 5-time recipient of the Best Restaurant in the World by Restaurant Magazine, and media, professionals and scientists have recognized the global impact of its work in the food industry over the last two decades. This impact is closely connected to the model of evolving creativity that elBulli team has implemented and refined over the years. We combine the qualitative study of documents produced by elBulli restaurant with networks analysis in order to represent a model of evolving creativity that can be applied to other domains and industries.

The preliminaries project: Geography, networks, and publication in the Spanish Golden Age

This study uses information gleaned from the front matter, or preliminaries, of Spanish Golden Age texts to model the social networks underpinning the early modern publication industry. Using a data-driven approach, we examine the historical and political conditions that influenced the process of approval, censorship, and publication in the Spanish Empire, with a particular focus on the concept of geography, as it relates to the process of community formation and composition. We find that the literary publishing scene was dominated by a small group of authors, generally tied to Madrid, but highly published across Iberian cultural and political capitals. These authors, together with the powerful literary patrons who they relied upon for support, served as local bridges between communities that formed primarily at the local level. Regionally, we find groups of literate bureaucrats, clergymen, printers, and booksellers working together to fulfill the legal requirements for publication as dictated by the Spanish crown. Finally, we see how certain individuals tend to stand out at the regional level as gatekeepers to the publication industry, interacting equally with high- and low-profile individuals to approve and publish texts.

The Potosí principle: religious prosociality fosters self-organization of larger communities under extreme natural and economic conditions

We show how in colonial Potosı́ (present-day Bolivia) social and political stability was achieved through the self-organization of society through the repetition of religious rituals. Our analysis shows that the population of Potosı́ develops over the time a series of cycles of rituals and miracles as a response to social upheaval and natural disasters and that these cycles of religious performance become crucial mechanisms of cooperation among different ethnic and religious groups. Our methodology starts with a close reading and annotation of the Historia de Potosı́ by Bartolomé Arzans. Then, we model the religious cycles of miracles and rituals and store all social and cultural information about the cycles in a multirelational graph database. Finally, we perform graph analysis through traversals queries in order to establish facts concerning social networks, historical evolution of behaviors, types of participation of miraculous characters according to dates, parts of the city, ethnic groups, etc. It is also important to note that the religious activity at the group level gave native communities a way to participate in the social life. It also guaranteed that the city performed its role as producer of silver in the global economic structure of the Spanish empire. This case proves the importance of religion as a mechanism of stability and self-organization in periods of social or political turbulence. The multidisciplinary methodology combining traditional humanistic techniques with graph analysis shows a great potential for other sociological, historical, and literary problems. ................................................................................................................................................................................. Correspondence: The CulturePlex Lab, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond