Matthew Lavin

Matthew Lavin

Assistant Professor
Position Type
Faculty
Service
- Present
Specialization
Humanities Analytics, Cultural Analytics
Biography

I am a book historian and scholar of literature who specializes in quantitative and computational methods. My research interests include American literature; Willa Cather studies; the history of authorship, readership, and publishing; cultural analytics curriculum and pedagogy; reproducibility; open data for the humanities; and the position of cultural analytics within and beyond the digital humanities.

Degree(s)
PhD, University of Iowa; MS, Utah State University; BA, St. Lawrence University

Learning & Teaching

Courses
  • Introduction to Data Analytics (DA 101)
  • Data Systems (CS 181/DA 210)
  • Introduction to Cultural Analytics (DA 245)
  • Practicum in Data Analytics (DA 301)
  • Advanced Descriptive Methods for Data Analytics (DA 351)
  • Seminar in Data Analytics (DA 401)
Academic Positions

Council for Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH), 2012-2013.

Associate Program Coordinator, “Crossing Boundaries: Re-envisioning the Humanities for the 21st Century” (Andrew W. Mellon grant), St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY 2013-2015.

Clinical Assistant Professor of English and Director Digital Media Lab, University of Pittsburgh, 2015-2020

Works

Publications
  • “Modular Bibliographical Profiling of Historic Book Reviews.” Journal of Open Humanities Data, March 2024, https://doi.org/10.5334/johd.183
  • “Linear Regression in Python.” The Programming Historian. Summer 2022, https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/linear-regression
  • “Logistic Regression in Python.” The Programming Historian. Summer 2022, https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/logistic-regression
  • “Why Digital Humanists Should Emphasize Situated Data over Capta” Digital Humanities Quarterly 15.2 (Fall 2021): http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/15/2/000556/000556.html
  • “Digits: Two Reports on New Units of Scholarly Publication” The Journal of Electronic Publishing (JEP). Co-authored by Matt Burton, Matthew J. Lavin, Jessica Otis, and Scott Weingart (author order alphabetical). Winter 2019, http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0022.105
  • “Gender Dynamics and Critical Reception: A Study of Early 20th-century Book Reviews from The New York Times” CA: the Journal of Cultural Analytics. January 2020, https://culturalanalytics.org/article/11831-gender-dynamics-and-critical-reception-a-study-of-early-20th-century-book-reviews-from-the-new-york-times
  • “Logistic Regression.” The Digital Humanities Literacy Guidebook. Fall 2019, https://cmu-lib.github.io/dhlg/ “Analyzing Documents with TF-IDF.” The Programming Historian. May 2019, https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/analyzing-documents-with-tfidf
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