Jean Barré



I am a second-year Ph.D. candidate working with Thierry Poibeau, and Thomas Conrad at École Normale Supérieure / PSL University in Paris.

My research falls within the field of Computational Literary Studies, where we employ machine learning and NLP techniques on large, digitized text collections. The aim is to explore literary history through both close and distant reading analyses, gaining insights into long-term literary trends and validate their textual authenticity.

Feel free to reach me !

Email  /  Google Scholar  /  Github  /  Twitter  /  Bluesky

Summary

One aspect of my work focuses on the concept of Canonicity and its process of canonization. I aim to investigate whether we can establish links between canonicity and textual dynamics, exploring whether they can be seen as causal or as outcomes of biased latent selection mechanisms.

In addition, I am focusing on Genette's idea of architextuality, which encompass various relationships such as imitation, influence, and subversion that one text shares with all others. I have a particular interest in novelistic sub-genres as expressions of this architextuality.

The ultimate goal of the project is to develop synchronic models that facilitate the analysis of the formal evolution of literature.

I graduated from a master's degree program in Digital Humanities with a specialization in CLS at École nationale des Chartes in 2022.

Publications

Peer-reviewed articles



- Barré et al. “Beyond Canonicity. Modeling Canon/Archive Literary Change in French Fiction.”
Proceedings of the Conference on Computational Humanities Research CHR2023, Dec 2023, Paris, France. CHR Proceedings, {hal-04279087} - [pdf].

- Vianne et al. “Gender Bias in French Literature.”
Proceedings of the Conference on Computational Humanities Research CHR2023, Dec 2023, Paris, France. CHR Proceedings, [pdf].

- Barré, et al. “Operationalizing Canonicity: A Quantitative Study of French 19th and 20th Century Literature.”
Journal of Cultural Analytics, vol. 8, no. 1, Oct. 2023, https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.88113, [pdf].

- Barré et al. “Pour une Détection Automatique de l’Espace Personnage dans les Romans.”
Humanistica, Association francophone des humanités numériques, Jun 2023, Genève, Suisse, {hal-04105537} - [pdf - french].

- Grunspan, et al. “Event Annotation for Literary Corpora Analysis.”
DH2022, Tokyo, Jul 2022. {hal-03738806} - [pdf].

Talks

- December 2023, Beyond Canonicity: Modeling Canon/Archive Literary Change in French Fiction. [pdf].
Conference on Computational Humanities Research CHR2023, Dec 2023, Paris, France.

- December 2023, Using LLMs & Fr-BookNLP to study subgenres: First experiments. [pdf].
Pre-Conference Workshop CHR2023, Dec 2023, Paris, France.

- December 2023, Spécificités Stylistiques des Prix Littéraires [pdf - french], with Pedro Cabrera Ramirez.
Journée d'Étude: Identifier les régularités stylistiques dans le discours littéraire, Dec 2023, Paris, France.

- June 2023, Mesurer le Changement Littéraire [pdf - french].
Journée Doctorale du Lattice, Jun 2023, Montrouge, France.

- June 2023, Pour une Détection Automatique de l’Espace Personnage dans les Romans [pdf - french], with Pedro Cabrera Ramirez.
Humanistica 2023, Association francophone des humanités numériques, Jun 2023, Genève, Suisse.

- April 2023, Operationalizing Canonicity. A Quantitative Study of French 19th and 20th Century Literature [pdf].
Stanford Literary Lab meetings.

- March 2023, What BookNLP does to Texts ? [pdf - french], with Frédérique Mélanie-Becquet.
Workshop - Ce que le numérique fait aux humanités, École Normale Supérieure.

- November 2022, Une Histoire Computationnelle du Genre dans la Fiction - [pdf - french]
Séminaire du Lattice.

- September 2022, French BookNLP - Progress Report - [pdf]
Presentation to David Bamman, UC Berkeley.

Teaching

- Fall 2023, Python for Computational Humanities, École Nationale des Chartes, Master Humanités Numériques. Github Repository

- Oct 2023, Introduction to Computational Literary Studies, École Nationale des Chartes, Master Humanités Numériques. [pdf - french]

- March 2023, Introduction to NLP for DH, École Normale Supérieure, [pdf - french], with Thierry Poibeau.

- Nov 2022, A Computational Literary History of Gender in Fiction, PSL intensive week.
Project 4 - link Introduction [pdf], Github Repository, Students Results [pdf], Report - french.


Big thanks to the original template author.