Interdisciplinary insights are essential for realizing the full potential of corpus-assisted analysis methods that deal with processing rich social and cultural data. In order to capture a range of ideas and identify commonalities that resonate with the body of research in the field, within the study course it is planned to consider different approaches to corpus-assisted studies in humanities. The study course covers a set of crucial questions in corpus studies, including conceptualisation, data selection and operationalisation, analysis and interpretation of results.
The study course consists of two blocks covering the theory and practice of corpus compilation and processing. In the theoretical part, students are invited to consider a number of diverse case studies and analyse the problems of building different types of corpora. The practical part is devoted to experiments with the corpus of fanfics (i.e., amateur interpretations of commercial texts) explicitly tailored for the needs of the study course. The selected research material allows scholars of different backgrounds and pursuing different research interests (such as socio-linguistics, media studies, translation studies, literary studies, and anthropology) to analyse research questions on its basis.