First, let me take a moment to “chuckle” at the pun and response to the pun in Simula’s post.

I don’t quite know how I feel about distant reading. The majority of me is of the opinion that “yes, this is totally a valid way to analyze literature and is amazingly useful in conjunction with familiar close reading.” The other part of me is looking at the Agate tutorials and cookbooks and is wordlessly expressing confusion and doubt. Maybe the fact that the tutorial is working with something inherently more quantifiable than literature makes me wary of how well my experiment will work in tomorrow’s workshop.

I’m very uncertain about my queries. First, I tried to search for “frock,” and the results compiled very quickly. Then I searched for “dress.” The results were also quick, which makes me nervous. I wish I could think of something like “queer world making” or another delightfully specific phrase. I would believe in the results of such a query. As it stands, I’ll be interested in seeing if my results even form a table tomorrow.