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Zoe LeBlanc

@zoeleblanc

Assistant Prof @iSchool UIUC studying digital humanities and histories of information. Interested in how we study the past with computers. she/her

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28.07.2023
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Latest posts by Zoe LeBlanc @zoeleblanc

Also would love to see this! It's so tricky to find the right balance with these tools moving so quickly but totally agree that foundations of infrastructure and computational thinking (aka interpretation) are key!! I feel like there's already a panel forming here lol. AHA 2027 or DH 2027 anyone 🀩?

01.02.2026 18:11 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

This is absolutely how we should pitch coding agents to humanists.

Strictly speaking, what mattered about code was never arbitrary syntax, but clearly specifying data structures and processes. And coding agents still force/teach you to do that part. But … shhh! Let’s get ppl on board.

31.01.2026 19:44 πŸ‘ 82 πŸ” 12 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 2
IS310 - Culture As Data Spring 2026

Totally!! I'll be curious to see how it changes DH coding practices which were mostly libraries for one like you said. Mostly it just is such a time saver. Ported my undergrad website from Jekyll to Quarto in like 20 minutes cultureasdata-uiuc.github.io/is310-spring... . Just absolutely bonkers!

31.01.2026 19:11 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I know @regan008.bsky.social is also teaching coding with chatbots and even uses Cursor which I haven't tried out yet. But highly recommend VS Code and Claude. It's truly bonkers though it did technically delete all my code this morning too so definitely use with caution/good version histories πŸ˜‚πŸ˜…

31.01.2026 19:07 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
IS597_2026_Replication_Experiments/week3_code/replication_code at main Β· ZoeLeBlanc/IS597_2026_Replication_Experiments Repository for Culture At Scale Spring 2026 Replication Experiments - ZoeLeBlanc/IS597_2026_Replication_Experiments

Might be of interest but in my grad seminar I force the students to rerun existing code and Claude has essentially solved this issue. I was able to rerun @tedunderwood.com 's chapter 2 code for Distant Horizons without writing any code github.com/ZoeLeBlanc/I...

31.01.2026 19:05 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

Aww thanks lady!! And ya I'm confronting all of this pretty every semester. Been teaching undergrads and grads with chatbots since 2022. Agree with @ryancordell.org that Claude is a game charger for my work but still waiting to see if agents helps me not have to deal with broken git histories lol

31.01.2026 19:05 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Is anyone else getting some very weird #DH2026 submissions to review? And by weird, I mean almost entirely seemingly AI-generated? Like with entire sections missing text and weird giant fonts and bizarre footnotes.

Curious how are other conferences handling this issue??

26.01.2026 03:10 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
National Council on Public History

Thanks @tedunderwood.com! @christorical.bsky.social if you are available Jan 29 @4pm EST @jerielizabeth.bsky.social, @faisdaudau.bsky.social and I are doing a session on demystifying AI and ML for humanists with the @ncph.bsky.social. More info available here community.ncph.org/event/AIHuma...

17.01.2026 19:07 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Which canonical American authors are the public reading, and why?

To find out, we analyzed library borrowing patterns for every author in the Norton Anthology of American Literature (1945 to the Present).

Excited to share this new CHR paper & data!
anthology.ach.org/volumes/vol0...

#CHR2025

11.12.2025 19:00 πŸ‘ 166 πŸ” 44 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 9
Lavender graphic with white outline and dark purple text. UW CALMA and the University of Washington Information School logos.

Lavender graphic with white outline and dark purple text. UW CALMA and the University of Washington Information School logos.

#CFP: Our Center for Advances in Libraries, Museums, and Archives (CALMA) invites proposals for the inaugural Black Information Futures Symposium, February 21–23, 2026, in Seattle. Please save the date & reshare!

Submit a proposal by 12/10: #phdchat calma.ischool.uw.edu/uw-news/call...

04.12.2025 23:42 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Do you write research software for the humanities?
Consider writing a software paper to share your work!

Reach out to me, @nolauren.bsky.social , or any of the other editors at the CHR journal with your questions or ideas.

01.12.2025 15:23 πŸ‘ 29 πŸ” 14 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 3

Those interested in a potential roundtable on "Historical Research and Artificial Intelligence: Critical Reflections on Method, Power, and Possibility in International History" that @zoeleblanc.bsky.social and I are planning for @shafrhistorians.bsky.social 2026 - please send us your abstracts!

10.11.2025 16:05 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Job alert!

@ischoolui.bsky.social is hiring in 4 areas this year

Early literacies: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Information behavior/HCI/UX: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Information, Culture & Society: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Open IS: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

06.11.2025 15:54 πŸ‘ 31 πŸ” 29 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Hu, Y., Diesner, J., Underwood, T., LeBlanc, Z., Layne-Worthey, G., & Downie, J. S. (2025). Who decides what is read on Goodreads? Uncovering sponsorship and its implications for scholarly Research. Big Data & Society, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517251359229 (Original work published 2025)

Hu, Y., Diesner, J., Underwood, T., LeBlanc, Z., Layne-Worthey, G., & Downie, J. S. (2025). Who decides what is read on Goodreads? Uncovering sponsorship and its implications for scholarly Research. Big Data & Society, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517251359229 (Original work published 2025)

My co-authors, Jana Diesner, @tedunderwood.me, @zoeleblanc.bsky.social, @gworthey.bsky.social and
@profdownie.bsky.social, and I are excited to share our paper in @bigdatasoc.bsky.social "Who decides what is read on Goodreads?" on book review sponsorship, open access at doi.org/10.1177/2053....

18.08.2025 19:55 πŸ‘ 58 πŸ” 20 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 0

#ThanksBrett for always looking forward. You saw a bright future for the humanities, as key interlocutors in the most pressing socio-technical discussions of our moment, and you created opportunities for those conversations to actually happen. We all owe @brettbobley.bsky.social enormous debts

13.06.2025 18:09 πŸ‘ 38 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Today's the day! I invite close readers to see if they can find the places where I channeled the most rage into this project. It is supposed to make you uncomfortable. You are supposed to try to dismiss it as "praxis" vs. "theory" and then you are supposed to be convinced otherwise.

22.04.2025 17:50 πŸ‘ 112 πŸ” 36 πŸ’¬ 9 πŸ“Œ 1

Thanks for reposting this @literaturegeek.bsky.social ❀️!!

16.04.2025 17:48 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Oh wow this was so detailed!! Thank you so much!! Also totally think this final use case you outline makes a ton of sense for my needs, so think I'm gonna try it out and see how far I get.

16.04.2025 17:47 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Ohh that's helpful to know! Sveltekit has been on my would like to learn, but didn't realize it had been designed for newsroom dataviz, which is definitely a big part of this use case. Thanks so much for sharing!!

16.04.2025 17:46 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Been meaning to try sveltekit so this might the use case! Definitely would love for it to be fully static since I have enough headaches in my life currently but could try out Vercel too. Mostly thanks for this advice @bschmidt.bsky.social !! It definitely helps!!

16.04.2025 17:43 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

thanks so much for this @jamiefolsom.bsky.social !! Will definitely check it out (docs look impressive already) and reach out if I have questions.

16.04.2025 17:42 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I'm not sure I fully trust these answers and this is important so please chime in! And yes, I realize stuff is nuts now but genuinely could use the help even if it's a thumbs up for Next.JS

Also is Next.JS really this good?? Sorta surprised it was suggested for both answers πŸ‘€

16.04.2025 00:04 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
ChatGPT - Dream Tech Stack Proposal Shared via ChatGPT

as well as a fair amount of data (100k messages & a bunch of pdfs/images)Finally, need to keep it password protected for the moment, what's your dream tech stack? Asked ChatGPT, said Next.JS + Supabase. Then asked if I could go static and it said Next.JS + Netlify. chatgpt.com/share/67fef3...

16.04.2025 00:04 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Dumb Q but genuinely need help: say you have a few weeks (maybe only 2) to build a website what's your dream tech stack? Ideally deploy from GitHub though could white knuckle it through AWS, custom domain, & will have complex data viz (d3 & vega) and navigation;

16.04.2025 00:04 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 1
Preview
New A.I. Project Explores Mysteries of Delacroix, Master of Romanticism (Gift Article) Eric and Wendy Schmidt and the Sorbonne will fund a new program to digitize Delacroix’s papers and identify other artists who may have contributed to his murals and paintings.

I missed this announcement back in March.

"For Schmidt Sciences, Digital Delacroix is the first of a projected 10 to 15 grant recipients that will receive a total of $10 million to apply A.I. to research in the humanities."

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/a...

11.04.2025 18:13 πŸ‘ 8 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Post image Post image

Pre-announcing one of the first fork of Common Corpus: French ScienceCommons, the largest open corpus of French academic publication (about 30 billion words). New Pleias project unveiled on Wednesday at the French AcadΓ©mie des Sciences.

11.04.2025 17:40 πŸ‘ 15 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

So strange, as the stress and worry about the world grows in this household, so to do the number of Japanese wood-block prints.

In order: Hiroshi Yoshida, Shiro Kasamatsu, and Hasui Kawase

11.04.2025 22:47 πŸ‘ 26 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 1