Can computational methods such as text mining, mapping, and network analysis help us to understand the historical fate of authors and their works more systematically and on a larger scale than traditional approaches? Ryan Cordell and his colleagues in the Viral Texts project at Northeastern University have been showing that they can. A specialist in American literature and print culture, Cordell presents some of his team's latest findings about 19th-century systems of textual circulation, reprinting, and remediation.

Ryan Cordell is Assistant Professor of English at Northeastern University, where he focuses on religion and nineteenth-century American fiction. Cordell is a founding board member of centerNet's DHCommons Initiative, an online hub that matches digital humanities projects seeking assistance with scholars interested in project collaboration. He also writes at ProfHacker for the Chronicle of Higher Education. In addition, he is vice president of Digital Americanists, a scholarly society dedicated to the study of American literature and digital media. He is currently developing a comparative, digital edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Celestial Railroad."