Lecture: Matt Jockers

Title: "Linguistic Entailments, Bestselling DNA, and other Absurd Ideas”

Description: In this talk, leading digital humanities researcher Matt Jockers describes how algorithms reveal the unique patterns of individual linguistic style and allow us to predict which authors and which books are mostly likely to hit the New York Times Bestseller list.  He discusses foundational work in authorship attribution, stylometry—and even some neuroscience and behavioral genetics—in a talk that ultimately leads us to question the entire notion of creativity and authorial agency.

This event is hosted in collaboration with the Humanities Digital Workshop and the Center for the Humanities' Redefining Doctoral Education initiative.

Bio: Matthew Jockers is a distinguished research scientist and senior engineering manager at Apple where he leads the research teams that help customers discover great books, movies, and podcasts. Prior to joining Apple, Jockers served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Literature and Data Analytics at Washington State University. As an academic, he deployed natural language processing and machine learning to extract and understand cultural trends and linguistic patterns in large collections of literature. He has authored numerous research articles in stylometry and authorship attribution as well as a handful of books that include Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History (2013), Text Analysis with R for Students of Literature (two editions 2014, 2020), and The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Block Buster Novel (2016). Alongside his academic career, Jockers has worked in industry and non-profits. He was founding Director of Research at Novel Projects (a data-driven book recommendations startup that was acquired in 2014). In 2017 he co-founded Archer Jockers, LLC, a book industry consulting company that he ran for two years with his Bestseller Code co-author, and former Stanford student, Jodie Archer. In 2019 he co=founded Authors A.I. with JD Lasica and Alessandra Torre. Authors A.I. is a text mining company that leverages artificial intelligence and data analytics to help writers develop and market successful novels.