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SUMMARY:Multimodal Methods for Spaces and Places in Novels
DTSTART:20261028T160000Z
DTEND:20261028T170000Z
UID:https://cdh.princeton.edu/events/2026/10/axel-delano-fabiano-bax/
DESCRIPTION:\n\n  One of the fundamental pieces of a novel is the setting.
  Yet quantifying and extracting spatial relationships in novels is difficu
 lt due their imprecise nature. My first project uses computer vision techn
 iques to identify 2600 maps that appear in novels\, from 32 million page s
 cans. I found that novels with maps are often rich in spatial language wit
 hin the text and maps are often depicting real (rather than fictional) pla
 ces. Further\, we often think of highly mobile characters making long jour
 neys from one city or country or another\, but what if we count the number
  of separate movements made? Is the house-maid then more mobile than the p
 irate? For my second project\, I finetuned a large language model to perfo
 rm this annotation task at a rate similar to human experts to find out the
  qualities of these movements\, including: who is moving\, where they are 
 moving to/from\, how often they move\, and how far they move. These projec
 ts build a foundation for future multimodal spatial projects that map out 
 character journeys at scale.Axel Bax is a third-year PhD student in the In
 formation Science department at Cornell University\, advised by David Mimn
 o and Matthew Wilkens. He completed his BA in English &amp\; Psychology at
  Johns Hopkins University\, as well as his Master’s in Geographic Inform
 ation Systems. His interest lies in the Digital Humanities\, specifically
 \, understanding aspects of literature at scale. He is especially excited 
 about understanding spaces and places within the novel and often uses mult
 imodal methods.\n\n\nhttps://cdh.princeton.edu/events/2026/10/axel-delano-
 fabiano-bax/
LOCATION:Center for Digital Humanities\, Firestone Library\, Floor B
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