The Novelty Project Companion Site

The Novelty Project has been an ongoing collaboration of Devin Higgins (MSU Libraries), Arend Hintze (Integrative Biology, Computer Science & Engineering), and Laura McGrath (English). This website serves as a record of work, a landing page for works-in-progress, and as a companion piece for forthcoming publications.

Situated at the intersection of digital humanities, literary studies, and metagenomics, The Novelty Project has developed a method for measuring literary novelty, applying methods from metagenomics to the study of literary texts. Together, the team has been at work 1) uncovering the textual features that distinguish a text as novel, 2) comparing patterns in novelty across texts, and 3) proposing a typology of literary novelty in the 20th century. They are currently completing Phase II of the project, including validating initial results on a larger data set and developing mechanisms for reporting.

Phase II has been generously supported by the HathiTrust Research Center under an Advanced Collaborative Support Grant.