Overview:

The DSPG project aims to analyze textual data produced as part of The American Soldier in World War II, a federally funded, multi-institutional digital history project which is designed to raise public awareness on the experiences of World War II American GIs. The project harvests data from a unique and historic collection that was produced by the U.S. Army during the war, “attitude surveys” that were administered to hundreds of thousands of American troops. The DSPG team analyzes soldiers’ handwritten responses by using natural language processing methods and social network analysis to dive into soldiers’ attitudes about other social groups (groups to which they did not themselves identify), ethnic and racial relations as well as gender relations.

Teaser Video:

Research Project Webpage:

Click here for more details about the project including findings, data, and methods.

Fellows:

Morgan Stockham

Morgan Elaine Stockham

Claremont Graduate University, Applied Microeconomics
 
 
 
 

Mary Soloman

Mary Solomon

Bowling Green State University, Applied Statistics
 
 
 
 

Interns:

Saimun Habib

Saimun Habib

Harvard College, Statistics
 
 
 
 

Chase Dawson

Chase Dawson

University of Virginia, Computer Science
 
 
 
 

Mentors:

Gizem Korkmaz

Research Associate Professor, Biocomplexity Institute, University of Virginia

Brandon Kramer

Postdoctoral Associate, Biocomplexity Institute, University of Virginia

Stakeholder:

Ed Gitre

Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech Department of History

External Collaborators:

Mark Embree

Professor of Mathematics, VT Department of Mathematics, and Director of Computational Modeling & Data Analytics (CMDA)

Savannah Amos

Virginia Tech Computational Modeling & Data Analytics (CMDA)

Yash Joshi

Virginia Tech Computational Modeling & Data Analytics (CMDA)

Drew Klaubert

Virginia Tech Computational Modeling & Data Analytics (CMDA)