Drs. Bowers and Holland presenting at XIX International Dostoevsky Symposium. Photo taken by Chloe Papadopoulos.
Dr. Katherine Bowers (CENES) and Dr. Kate Holland (University of Toronto) gave a keynote at the XIX International Dostoevsky Symposium in Buenos Aires, Argentina on June 17, 2026.
The triennial International Dostoevsky Symposium is the largest and most important meeting of Dostoevsky specialists. Their keynote, titled “Mapping Scandal and Intrigue: Speech Networks and Character Interactions in Dostoevsky’s Novels Over Time,” presented research from their SSHRC-funded project “Computational Dostoevsky,” a digital humanities project that aims to use computational text analysis to examine Dostoevsky’s major novels.
Demons in speech network graphs
Drs. Bowers and Holland discussed ways of understanding Dostoevsky’s engagement with genre through character speech networks in the novel Demons (1872). More information about (and visualizations from) the talk can be seen on their Digital Dostoevsky blog.
