[Digital_humanities] DH WG: Fairy Tales of Socialism - LLMs for Mapping Narratives, Political Concepts, and Motifs in Socialist Society-Building

[Bee Lehman]

To my delight, I'd like to let you know about the upcoming Polona Tratnick
talk for the UC Berkeley Digital Humanities Working Group!

*When*: April 27 (Monday) at 2pm (one hour)
*Where*: D-Lab, 350 Social Sciences Building and on Zoom

*Fairy Tales of Socialism: LLMs for Mapping Narratives, Political Concepts,
and Motifs in Socialist Society-Building*
Fairy tales are fundamental tools for shaping collective worldviews. They
do not merely entertain, but transmit values, encode moral norms, and
establish imaginaries of belonging, justice, and social order. In socialist
regimes, fairy tales became powerful instruments in shaping the youngest
members of society—those most susceptible to ideological formation.
However, the political use of fairy tales in socialism has only been
partially explored. While existing studies have focused on the Soviet Union
and its use of literature for nation-building and ideological control, the
Yugoslav model combined socialist ideology with distinctive political
imaginaries such as workers’ self-management, brotherhood and unity, and
partisan heroism. Fairy tales played a crucial role in disseminating these
narratives and legitimizing the postwar communist regime through a
mythologized representation of World War II. I investigate how fairy tales
participated in the making of socialist society, focusing on the Yugoslav
case. By developing an innovative conceptual mapping method, supported by
large language models (LLMs), I analyze cultural narratives, core political
concepts, and recurring motifs across time and space.

- Sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, UC Berkeley Library
and hosted by the D-Lab.



-- 
Bee Lehman, Ph.D.
Lit and Digital Humanities Librarian
Doe Library 438, UC Berkeley
on *Huichin Ohlone Land*
beelehman at berkeley.edu
Regular hours: Monday through Friday, 730 to 1600 (4pm)
Zoom room <https://berkeley.zoom.us/my/beelehman>