@inproceedings{7c28ea6e124540a994e081d3015b72b3,
title = "Oscillation between Contemplation and Revelation: Recurrence and Change in the Life History of Teresa of {\'A}vila",
abstract = "Advancements in language technology and applied mathematics offer a plethora of tools that can enrich textual cultural heritage research. Using an information-theoretical approach to author profiling, this paper tries to leverage some of these tools to reconstruct mental states in the Early Modern Spanish author Teresa of {\'A}vila. We shift away from traditional static textual feature analysis and instead approach author profiling as a dynamic problem, requiring a representation of the author{\textquoteright}s life history. Teresa of {\'A}vila was an Early Modern Spanish mystic and Carmelite nun whose authorship offers a unique dataset due to her prolific output and well-preserved, digitized writings. We model Teresa{\textquoteright}s letter corpus as a complex system with multiple states and try to track her mental and socio-cultural dynamics through lexical co-occurrence structures and affective valences in her letters. We find that Teresa{\textquoteright}s letters reflect a life history of state switching between contemplation and revelation. This relatively new approach offers a more robust and dynamic perspective on author profiling in cultural heritage research.",
keywords = "author profiling, cultural heritage data, information theory, change detection",
author = "Nielbo, {Kristoffer Laigaard} and Jan Kostkan and Baunvig, {Katrine Fr{\o}kj{\ae}r} and Ekaterina Borisova and Geertz, {Armin W.}",
year = "2023",
month = nov,
day = "21",
language = "English",
series = "CEUR Workshop Proceedings",
publisher = "CEUR-WS.org",
pages = "715--733",
editor = "Artjoms {\v S}eļa and Fotis Jannidis and Iza Romanowska",
booktitle = "Computational Humanities Research 2023",
}