Publications
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English Language Notes, 64.1, 169–178, 2026
Abstract
Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, large language models (LLMs), once the purview of machine learning experts, computational linguists, and cultural analytics scholars, have entered the public discourse. Many different metaphors have been used to describe these models, and all of them reach past thinking of large language models as simply instruments for using language (or, as the companies that sell chatbots would have it, as artificial intelligence itself)—instead, many scholars ask us to consider the model as something that both uses language and is made of language. This essay will contextualize the history of LLMs within a larger history of compilation in text technologies and the digital humanities. In this broader historical view, it is possible to understand LLMs as programs that use compilations as training inputs to produce compilations as readable output but are not themselves compilations within their model architecture. The metaphor of compilation is useful, alongside the many other metaphors used to understand these often-opaque models, as a way of capturing the historical continuities in how language models are trained and how their outputs are read.
BibTeX
@article{ladd_inputoutput_2026, title = {Input/{Output}: {LLMs}, {Compilation}, and the {History} of {Text} {Technologies}}, volume = {64}, issn = {0013-8282}, shorttitle = {Input/{Output}}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-12301864}, doi = {10.1215/00138282-12301864}, number = {1}, urldate = {2026-07-06}, journal = {English Language Notes}, author = {Ladd, John}, month = apr, year = {2026}, pages = {169--178} } -
Milton Studies, 68.1, 88–112, 2026
Abstract
ABSTRACT. Milton’s writing understands and disassembles data as a source of certainty. His use of data (yes, he used data frequently in his work) and his understanding of the data-obsessed movements of his own historical moment show a writer attuned to the successes and failures of technological and scientific developments. With characteristic anxious subtlety, Milton attempts to manage the pressures and contradictions of data-focused uncertainty. Paradise Lost takes up thematic and formal gestures toward seventeenth-century scientific discourse, including many discussions on the nature of knowledge. These gestures can be made more legible by using computational methods to highlight overlooked word- and line-level features of Milton’s verse. Employing both quantitative and qualitative approaches to examine Paradise Lost and the history of the term data in the early modern period, this article shows that Milton’s understanding of the precarity of knowledge is rooted in a complex engagement with data of various forms.
BibTeX
@article{ladd_miltons_2026, title = {Milton’s {Precarious} {Data}}, volume = {68}, issn = {0076-8820}, url = {https://dx.doi.org/10.5325/miltonstudies.68.1.0088}, doi = {10.5325/miltonstudies.68.1.0088}, language = {en}, number = {1}, urldate = {2026-07-06}, journal = {Milton Studies}, author = {Ladd, John}, month = feb, year = {2026}, note = {Publisher: Duke University Press}, pages = {88--112} } -
AI for Humanists, 2025
BibTeX
@misc{ladd_working_2025, title = {Working with {Local} {LLMs} ({On} {Your} {Own} {Computer}!)}, url = {https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1V09aQmReB1iMDuTLIWArWODGbHlOK-kQ?usp=sharing}, journal = {AI for Humanists}, author = {Ladd, John R. and Walsh, Melanie}, month = jun, year = {2025} } -
Journal of Digital History, 2024
Abstract
This article will explore the role of network analysis research tools as/in scholarly infrastructure, and also detail our attempt...
BibTeX
@article{ladd_edge_2024, title = {Edge {Cases}: {The} {Making} of {Network} {Navigator} and {Critical} {Approaches} to {DH} {Tools}}, shorttitle = {Edge {Cases}}, url = {https://journalofdigitalhistory.org/en/article/nAW4E5etkMR6}, language = {En}, number = {jdh003}, urldate = {2026-07-06}, journal = {Journal of Digital History}, author = {Ladd, John R. and LeBlanc, Zoe}, month = jun, year = {2024}, note = {Publisher: DeGruyter Section: jdh003} } -
Modern Language Quarterly, 84.1, 87–89, 2023
Abstract
How do new methods make their mark on a field? As activity around an emerging methodology grows, a signal of maturity is the appearance of book-length treatments of the subject. For network analysis in early modern English literature, Blaine Greteman’s Networking Print in Shakespeare’s England is such a book, moving the field forward by taking seriously both the affordances of networks as a method for literary study and the discoveries and inquiries about print culture that a network approach can facilitate. Readers invested in digital methods, English book history, or both will find much to admire in this book, which argues that networks allow us to better see important shifts and figures in the world of early modern print while affirming that authors and readers were “aware of and involved in radical structural changes to the print network” in the period (2).
BibTeX
@article{ladd_networking_2023, title = {Networking {Print} in {Shakespeare}’s {England}: {Influence}, {Agency}, and {Revolutionary} {Change}}, volume = {84}, issn = {0026-7929}, shorttitle = {Networking {Print} in {Shakespeare}’s {England}}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-10189216}, doi = {10.1215/00267929-10189216}, number = {1}, urldate = {2026-07-06}, journal = {Modern Language Quarterly}, author = {Ladd, John R.}, month = mar, year = {2023}, pages = {87--89} } -
Social Knowledge Creation in the Humanities: Volume 2, 169–194, 2022
Abstract
In the humanities, the field of “social knowledge creation” has helped define how social media platforms and other collaborative spaces have shaped humanistic critique in the twenty-first century. The ability to access and organize information and people has been profoundly liberating in some online contexts, but social media also presents many issues which come to light in the often-overlapping domains of politics, media studies, and disinformation. While these countervailing influences are all around us, the essays collected in this volume represent a humanistic ethics of generosity, compassion, and care. Social knowledge creation refreshingly returns to humanist values, emphasizing that people matter more than networks, facts matter more than opinion, and ideas matter more than influence. As a result, the speed and scale of digital culture has challenged humanists from many disciplines to more clearly define the values of education, collaboration, and new knowledge in pursuit of human justice and equality. In short, online culture has presented a new opportunity to define how and why the humanities matter in the age of social media.
BibTeX
@incollection{mauro_reassembling_2022, series = {New {Technologies} in {Medieval} and {Renaissance} {Studies}}, title = {Reassembling the {Bacon}: {Crowdsourcing} {Historical} {Social} {Networks} in the {Redesign} of {Six} {Degrees} of {Francis} {Bacon}}, isbn = {978-1-64959-008-4}, url = {https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/S/bo99702245.html}, language = {en}, number = {8}, urldate = {2023-01-23}, booktitle = {Social {Knowledge} {Creation} in the {Humanities}: {Volume} 2}, publisher = {Iter Press}, author = {Ladd, John}, editor = {Mauro, Aaron}, month = nov, year = {2022}, pages = {169--194} } -
Partnership with Getty Collections Online, 2022
BibTeX
@misc{ladd_exploring_2022, title = {Exploring {Linked} {Art}}, url = {https://observablehq.com/@jrladd/linked-art-1}, journal = {Partnership with Getty Collections Online}, author = {Ladd, John R.}, month = mar, year = {2022} } -
International Journal for Digital Art History, 4.02–4.22, 2021
Abstract
In this multi-authored essay, thirteen participants in the 2019-2022 Getty Advanced Workshop on Network Analysis + Digital Art History (NA+DAH) discuss their experiences learning and working together at the intersection of these two fields of inquiry. The piece begins with a preface offering background on the workshop, continues with a series of “project biographies” for the NA+DAH teams participating in this roundtable, and then proceeds to the teams’ reflections on a series of probing questions crafted by the participants themselves. The authors reflect on what the NA+DAH Workshop has meant for their scholarship and their community-building efforts, hoping that these insights, acquired over years of productive discussion, can serve as a foundation of knowledge for other scholars who are interested in bringing these areas of study together in their research and teaching.
BibTeX
@article{langmead_network_2021, title = {Network {Analysis} + {Digital} {Art} {History}: {A} {Roundtable} on a {Collective} {Scholarly} {Experience}}, copyright = {Copyright (c) 2021 Author retains ownership of all rights under copyright in all versions of the written article. Journal retains ownership of the layout and design of the DAHJ version of the article.}, issn = {2363-5401}, shorttitle = {Network {Analysis} + {Digital} {Art} {History}}, url = {https://ahnp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/dah/article/view/90725}, doi = {10.11588/dah.2021.7.90725}, language = {en}, number = {7}, urldate = {2026-07-06}, journal = {International Journal for Digital Art History}, author = {Langmead, Alison and Helmreich, Anne and Ladd, John and Gao, Jin and Lin, Yi-Hsin and Palmer, Richard and Posthumus, Etienne and Zhang, Hongxing and Brosens, Koenraad and Beerens, Rudy Jos and Prekel, Inez de and Lamqaddam, Houda and Micklewright, Nancy and Mirza, Sana and Simavi, Zeynep and Smith, Jeffrey}, year = {2021}, keywords = {cultural analytics, DAH community, data visualization, interdisciplinary collaboration, network analysis}, pages = {4.02--4.22} } -
Journal of Cultural Analytics, 6.1, 2021
Abstract
This essay uses network metrics (centrality, density, clustering coefficients) to account for shifts in dedicatory practice resulting from political crises, religious turmoil, and changes in book production practices. It constructs a network from the names that appear in dedications of EEBO-TCP texts; names are detected using the linguistic markup from the EarlyPrint project. The essay argues that we learn more about early modern book history by constructing networks of all the names that appear in dedications, not just those of authors, printers, and patrons. The network includes a mixture of religious and political figures, literary personalities, fictional characters, and bookmaking professionals, because this is the full range of names that dedicatory practice covers in the period. By proceeding in this way, network metrics can account for a range of dedicatory phenomena, including Queen Elizabeth’s popularity on both sides of the political aisle long after her death and, especially, consolidation around non-contemporary names in dedicatory practice as a result of both the Civil War and the Restoration. The imaginative networks revealed by early modern dedications are organized mainly around untimely figures from the recent and distant past, but despite this the networks are sensitive to historical change, especially at moments of political and social crisis.
BibTeX
@article{ladd_imaginative_2021, title = {Imaginative {Networks}: {Tracing} {Connec}tions {Among} {Early} {Modern} {Book} {Dedi}cations}, volume = {6}, copyright = {. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.}, issn = {2371-4549}, shorttitle = {Imaginative {Networks}}, url = {https://culturalanalytics.org/article/id/1259/}, doi = {10.22148/001c.21993}, language = {None}, number = {1}, urldate = {2026-07-06}, journal = {Journal of Cultural Analytics}, author = {Ladd, John R.}, month = mar, year = {2021}, note = {Publisher: Center for Digital Humanities, Princeton University} } -
Programming Historian, 2020
BibTeX
@article{ladd_understanding_2020, title = {Understanding and {Using} {Common} {Similarity} {Measures} for {Text} {Analysis}}, url = {https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/common-similarity-measures}, language = {en}, urldate = {2026-07-06}, journal = {Programming Historian}, author = {Ladd, John R.}, month = may, year = {2020} } -
Milton Studies, 61.1, 23–39, 2019
Abstract
ABSTRACT. Milton’s Lycidas is often placed in the context of Milton’s career, but scholars have put less emphasis on its original print setting: the 1638 university miscellany Justa Edouardo King. By attending to the ways the poem may have been received by readers of the 1638 volume, this essay reads Lycidas as a response and counter to the other poems in the volume—the work of a poet attuned to his immediate social circumstances and reception. In Lycidas Milton is simultaneously engaged and at odds with his fellow contributors, and the poem expresses a tension between individual and collective impulses that would come to characterize much of Milton’s future writing.
BibTeX
@article{ladd_multivocal_2019, title = {The {Multivocal} {Monody}: {Milton} and the {Poetics} of {Justa} {Edouardo} {King}}, volume = {61}, issn = {0076-8820}, shorttitle = {The {Multivocal} {Monody}}, url = {https://dx.doi.org/10.5325/miltonstudies.61.1.0023}, doi = {10.5325/miltonstudies.61.1.0023}, language = {en}, number = {1}, urldate = {2026-07-06}, journal = {Milton Studies}, author = {Ladd, John R.}, month = mar, year = {2019}, note = {Publisher: Duke University Press}, pages = {23--39} } -
Spenser Review, 49.3, 2019
BibTeX
@article{ladd_digital_2019, title = {Digital {Projects}}, volume = {49}, url = {http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenseronline/review/item/49.3.5}, number = {3}, urldate = {2026-07-06}, journal = {Spenser Review}, author = {Ladd, John R. and Pentecost, Stephen and Rozencohn, Cora Lind}, year = {2019} } -
Programming Historian, 2017
BibTeX
@article{ladd_exploring_2017, title = {Exploring and {Analyzing} {Network} {Data} with {Python}}, url = {https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/exploring-and-analyzing-network-data-with-python}, language = {en}, urldate = {2026-07-06}, journal = {Programming Historian}, author = {Ladd, John R. and Otis, Jessica and Warren, Christopher N. and Weingart, Scott}, month = aug, year = {2017} }