Voyant Tools, Text Mining, and Mary Church Terrell's A Colored Woman in a White World (1940)

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Storying the Intersectionality of Gender and Race in a White World

Abstract

This digital historical study evaluates Black female activist and educator Mary Church Terrell’s domestic and international educational experiences in the late 19th century with the aid of her autobiography A Colored Woman in a White World (1940) and Voyant Tools (voyant-tools.org), an open-source, web-based application. More specifically, it utilizes text analysis to better understand patterns and visual trends associated with terms related to Terrell’s education experiences. By exploring Terrell’s autobiography and selecting chapters that specifically address her educational experiences, I hope to uncover how a digital methodology can support further understandings of her educational experiences.

Author

• Dellyssa Edinboro, Bellevue College