Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 84.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2023-06-08 21:33:22+00:00
From: Ray Siemens <siemens@uvic.ca>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.60: remembering David Hoover
As others have shared, David Hoover was not only a leader in the field, but a
friend and mentor to many in our community, myself included. News of his sudden
passing hit hard, in many different ways. And people do grieve in many
different ways, all of them meaningful.
At the time of David’s passing, he was about to travel to his own friend and
mentor’s celebration of life, presenting part of the eulogy. He and I had
chatted the week before, the topic of conversation being that he was (in
addition to waxing eulogistic in his thoughts) also preparing for his trip to
the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, taking place now as I write this, where
he was excited both to connect with friends and colleagues that had not met in
person since 2019 and to meet a group of more than a dozen new students … some
of whom had patiently waited through the pandemic to take his course, Out-of-
the-Box Text Analysis – a course with origins at the 2006 international DH
conference at the Sorbonne in Paris, on a sunny patio after an energizing day of
sessions, and which was taught by David at DHSI every year since then until the
pandemic. This year, he had updated some part of his course materials to
reflect recent methodological experiments he had conducted related to a role as
expert witness in an authorship/ownership rights trial, for a contemporary
novelist who was still apparently writing novels in their name long after
themselves passing; this latter bit was the hook for him, he said, when he
decided to accept the invitation to explore this, but the puzzle of the whole
thing kept him engaged in this project for quite some time. Maciej Eder was
kind enough to travel last-minute in order to lead David’s group of students for
the week, following David’s planned curriculum as much or more than any one of
us could hope to do for a good friend and colleague.
The day before DHSI started this year, a group met in our backyard to reconnect
with each other after so many years away from an in-person summer institute, and
to celebrate David’s positive memory around a makeshift gathering point: a chair
containing a picture of him and, at times, a glass of whisky. And as the
institute started, and the news of David’s passing spread further among those at
DHSI, we observed a moment of silence … of the sort that David would likely not
have wanted for himself, but one that our community offered nonetheless. Our
thoughts are with David’s loved ones at this time, family foremost as well as
those many beyond.
[A picture of a person on a red chair Description automatically generated with
medium confidence]
On 2023-05-31, 10:32 PM, "Humanist" <humanist@dhhumanist.org
<mailto:humanist@dhhumanist.org>> wrote:
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 60.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org <mailto:humanist@dhhumanist.org>
[1] From: <jkrybicki@gmail.com <mailto:jkrybicki@gmail.com>>
Subject: RE: [Humanist] 37.54: in memoriam (118)
[2] From: WARWICK, CLAIRE L. <c.l.h.warwick@durham.ac.uk
<mailto:c.l.h.warwick@durham.ac.uk>>
Subject: Remembering David Hoover (41)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2023-05-31 05:36:33+00:00
From: <jkrybicki@gmail.com <mailto:jkrybicki@gmail.com>>
Subject: RE: [Humanist] 37.54: in memoriam
Dear Willard,
It took me a couple of days to gather my thoughts on this unexpected loss of
stylometrist extraordinaire David Hoover. Apart from losing a great friend and
colleague and co-reveller, digital humanities have lost a very rare combination
of a truly literary mind and a rational statistician, who has probably close-
read more literature than other people have studied by distant reading. To me
an many others, the yearly meetings at our DH conferences owed much of their
attraction to the assurance of seeing David once again. This is now a void that
will be very hard to fill.
Indeed, my first meeting with David was at what was then called the ALLC/ACH
Conference in Gothenburg in 2004. I will always remember how open he was to a
newcomer like me, and how we immediately became partners in crime. After that,
the life of a stylometrist from Poland became much easier with a foothold on the
shoulders of those two stylometric giants (David and John Burrows). His emails
always contained a spirited literary quote at the bottom, and of course the one
that comes to mind in relation to David is Mark Twain’s: “Great people are those
who make others feel that they, too, can become great.” I am sure his many
students at NYU, DHSI and elsewhere would agree that this is perhaps the best
way to define David, dead or alive. If people like him can ever be truly dead.
Non omnis morietur, I think.
Those of us who were lucky to have known David, and our name is million, would
sooner or later end up in the pinnacle of hospitality, in that Moomin House-like
house in Brooklyn, perhaps around that elaborate barbecue range. And sooner or
later we would become friends with his wife Danise and the three "little"
Hoovers, whom we must now have in our thoughts.
Sincerely,
Jan Rybicki
-----Original Message-----
From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org <mailto:humanist@dhhumanist.org>>
Sent: Monday, May 29, 2023 6:50 AM
To: jkrybicki@gmail.com <mailto:jkrybicki@gmail.com>
Subject: [Humanist] 37.54: in memoriam
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 54.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org <mailto:humanist@dhhumanist.org>
Date: 2023-05-28 11:13:13+00:00
From: Jan Christoph Meister <mail@jcmeister.de <mailto:mail@jcmeister.de>>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.51: in memoriam
Willard, an epitaph beautifully put. Style, warmth, elegance and a twinkle in
the eye - with Dino and David another two of our trailblazers have joined the
chorus. And so it's for our generation now to harvest the wealth of loss and
remembrance.
Chris
jan christoph meister
"le doute est un état mental désagreable, mais la certitude est ridicule"
(voltaire)
+27 79 34 60414
https://jcmeister.de <https://jcmeister.de>
-----
Am 28.05.2023 06:46 schrieb Humanist
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 51.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
<mailto:humanist@dhhumanist.org>
Date: 2023-05-27 11:39:23+00:00
From: Marinella Testori <testorimarinella@gmail.com
<mailto:testorimarinella@gmail.com>>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.48: in memoriam
Dear Willard,
Many condolences and kind thoughts on the sad occasion of the loss of Professor
David Hoover.
*At the end of our lives we will be judged by love. * St John of the Cross
Marinella
----------------------------------------------------
Marinella Testori Ph.D.
Corpus Linguistics for Latin
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2023-05-31 14:02:21+00:00
From: WARWICK, CLAIRE L. <c.l.h.warwick@durham.ac.uk
<mailto:c.l.h.warwick@durham.ac.uk>>
Subject: Remembering David Hoover
Dear colleagues,
In mourning David Hoover, I find myself thinking of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 85 ‘My
tongued Muse’ : “I think good thoughts, whilst others write good words…”. So
following Jan Rybicki’s eloquent memorial of our dear friend and colleague, this
is my attempt, ‘to the most of praise’ (to) ‘add something more’,
Like Jan, it has taken me a few days to collect my thoughts. Just before I heard
the news, last week, I’d been forward to seeing David again at the DH2023
conference, after a Covid-prolonged absence. I am immeasurably sad that this
absence will now be indefinitely prolonged.
But what consoles me is that whenever I think of David, I imagine him smiling or
laughing. I remember the many times that we’d get together for a meal or a drink
at DH conferences or explore the city in which we were staying. Most of all I
remember evening conversations, often with Ray Siemens and Jan Rybicki over a
bottle of whisky- rambling discussions into which we managed the perennial
DHers’ feat of cramming months and years of friendship into a few hours’
meeting. David’s unerring instinct for the ideal balance between academic
rigour, dry wit and an appreciation for the ridiculous made him a wonderful
companion. At future DH gatherings there will always be a silence where his
laughter should have been.
David will be a huge loss to the DH community, not only as the great and
pioneering scholar he undoubtedly was, but also as a friend and mentor to so
many of us. He was an inspiration- always willing to encourage and advise, but
never dogmatic in his views. And always there was that smile…
Farewell David- sit tibi terra levis.
Claire
--------
Claire Warwick MA, MPhil, PhD
Professor of Digital Humanities
Co-Director Durham Institute of Data Science
Department of English Studies
Durham University
www.durham.ac.uk/staff/c-l-h-warwick/
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