Taylor Arnold

Research areas

• Film and television form

  Media studies · film cognition

  How do moving images communicate? I measure shot length, framing, sound, and editing across large collections of film and television and relate them to genre, industry, and national context, testing claims from film studies and cognitive film theory.

  Selected work: Every Shot, Zero-Shot (2026); The Shortcom Is Not a Short Sitcom (2026); Sitcom Form and Function (2025); Understanding Peanuts and Schulzian Symmetry (2023); Visual Style in Two Network Era Sitcoms (2019).

• Statistical evidence and methods

  Applied statistics · computational social science

  What can we infer when the corpus is the whole population, and when does a finding about culture replicate? I work on inference and replication for cultural data.

  Selected work: Closed Corpora, Open Questions (2026); A Computational Approach to Statistical Learning (2019); New Data: The Role of Statistics in DH (2019); Generalized Lasso Dual Path Algorithm (2016); Statistical Sleuthing: Olympic Figure Skating (2011).

• Language, learning, and perception

  Linguistics · cognitive science

  With linguists and psychologists, I study how people produce and perceive language and faces: keystroke logging of second-language writing, automatic scoring of learner speech, cognitive-linguistic approaches to language teaching, and meta-analysis in face perception.

  Selected work: Applied Cognitive Linguistics for Novice Learners (2026); Logging Keystrokes in Writing by English Learners (2024); Whisper for L2 Speech Scoring (2024); P-Curving the Fusiform Face Area (2019); Predicting CEFRL Levels in Learner English (2018).

• Visual archives and digital humanities

  Digital humanities · information science

  What does it mean to treat images as data? I develop the theory and methods of distant viewing and apply them to historical photographs and other visual archives, building search, annotation, and detection tools suited to how those archives were made.

  Selected work: Matérialité et vision par ordinateur (2026); Explainable Search and Discovery (2024); Distant Viewing (2023); Layered Lives (2022); Uncovering Latent Metadata in the FSA-OWI Photographic Archive (2017).

Publications

Books

• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2nd ed. 2024; 1st ed. 2015) Humanities Data in R: Exploring Networks, Geospatial Data, Images, and Text. Springer. html
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2023) Distant Viewing: Computational Exploration of Digital Images. MIT Press. html
• T. Arnold, C. Rivard and L. Tilton (2022) Layered Lives: Rhetoric and Representation in the Southern Life History Project. Stanford University Press. htmlpdf
• T. Arnold, B. Lewis and M. Kane (2019) A Computational Approach to Statistical Learning. CRC Press. html

Articles and chapters

• T. Arnold (2026) "Closed Corpora, Open Questions: Rethinking Statistical Evidence in Computational Humanities." Preprint. doi:10.5281/zenodo.21935531. pdfhtml
• T. Arnold (2026) "The Shortcom Is Not a Short Sitcom: Visual and Aural Pacing in French Television Comedy." Preprint. doi:10.5281/zenodo.21935481. pdfhtml
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2026) "Every Shot, Zero-Shot: The Decoupling of Framing and Duration in Sound-Era Hollywood and Prestige Film." Preprint. doi:10.5281/zenodo.21935394. pdfhtml
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (Expected 2026) "Matérialité et vision par ordinateur : construction d'algorithmes de détection aux spécificités des archives photographiques." Humanités numériques.
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (Expected 2026) "Creating Reusable Annotations for the Computational Analysis of Visual Culture." In: C. Bardiot and E. Château-Dutier (Eds.) La mesure des images : approches computationnelles en histoire et théorie des arts. Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.
• E. Kissling and T. Arnold (2026) "Preliminary Evidence That Applied Cognitive Linguistics Is Effective for Novice Learners Regardless of Their Individual Differences." Language Teaching Research, 30(2): 481–521. doi
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2025) "Sitcom Form and Function: Pacing and Production in a Collection of Thirty U.S. Series." Anthology of Computers and the Humanities (Proceedings of the Computational Humanities Research Conference), 3. doi:10.63744/yHo626es4FhQ. html
• T. van der Heijden, T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2025) "Distant Viewing the Amateur Film Platform." In: S. Dang, T. van der Heijden and C. G. Olesen (Eds.) Doing Digital Film History: Concepts, Tools, Practices. De Gruyter Oldenbourg. pdf
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2024) "Explainable Search and Discovery of Visual Cultural Heritage Collections with Multimodal Large Language Models." Proceedings of the Computational Humanities Research Conference. pdf
• G. Velentzas et al. (2024) "Logging Keystrokes in Writing by English Learners." Proceedings of LREC-COLING. pdf
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2024) "Automated Image Color Mapping for a Historic Photographic Collection." Proceedings of the Computational Humanities Research Conference. pdf
• N. Ballier, T. Arnold, A. Méli, T. Thurston and J.-B. Yunès (2024) "Whisper for L2 Speech Scoring." International Journal of Speech Technology, 27(4): 923–934. pdfdoi
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2024) "Distant Viewing Archives." In: L. Jaillant, C. Warwick, P. Gooding, K. Aske, G. Layne-Worthey and J. S. Downie (Eds.) Navigating Artificial Intelligence for Cultural Heritage Organisations. University College London (UCL) Press.
• T. Arnold, J. Wigard and L. Tilton (2023) "Understanding Peanuts and Schulzian Symmetry: Panel Detection, Caption Detection, and Gag Panels in 17,897 Comic Strips Through Distant Viewing." Cultural Analytics, 8(3): 1–31. pdf
• T. Arnold, L. Tilton and J. Wigard (2022) "Automatic Identification and Classification of Portraits in a Corpus of Historical Photographs." CEUR Workshop Proceedings. pdf
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2022; paperback 2025) "Analyzing Audio/Visual Data in the Digital Humanities." In: J. O'Sullivan (Ed.) The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities. Bloomsbury Academic. pdf
• N. Ballier, A. Balvet, T. Arnold and T. Gaillat (2022) "Some Metalinguistic Assumptions behind Tagsets for English: Evidence from that in Different Versions of the Brown Corpus." In: V. Arigne and C. Rocq-Migette (Eds.) Modèles et modélisation en linguistique. Peter Lang, pages 27–81. html
• A. Reinhart et al. (2021) "An Open Repository of Real-Time COVID-19 Indicators." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(51). pdf
• T. Arnold, J. van Gorp, S. Scagliola and L. Tilton (2021) "Special Issue: AudioVisual Data in DH." Digital Humanities Quarterly, 15(1). html
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2021) "Depth in Deep Learning: Knowledgeable, Layered, and Impenetrable." In: K. Redrobe and J. Scheible (Eds.) Deep Mediations. University of Minnesota Press. pdfhtml
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2021) "What's in a Name?" In: A. McGrail, A. D. Nieves and S. Senier (Eds.) People, Practice, Power: Digital Humanities outside the Center. University of Minnesota Press.
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2020) "Enriching Historic Photography with Structured Data Using Image Region Segmentation." Proceedings of the First Artificial Intelligence for Historical Image Enrichment and Access (AI4HI). pdf
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2020) "Distant Viewing Toolkit: A Python Package for the Analysis of Visual Culture." Journal of Open Source Software. pdf
• T. Arnold, N. Ayers, J. Madron, R. Nelson and L. Tilton (2020) "Visualizing a Large Spatiotemporal Collection of Historic Photography with a Generous Interface." Proceedings of the 5th IEEE Workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities (VIS4DH). pdf
• E. Burns, T. Arnold and C. Bukach (2019) "P-Curving the Fusiform Face Area: Meta-Analyses Support the Expertise Hypothesis." Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 104: 209–221. pdf
• T. Arnold, L. Tilton and A. Berke (2019) "Visual Style in Two Network Era Sitcoms." Cultural Analytics. pdf
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2019) "Distant Viewing: Analyzing Large Visual Corpora." Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 34 (Suppl. 1): i3–i16. pdf
• T. Arnold, N. Ballier, P. Lissón and L. Tilton (2019) "Beyond Lexical Frequencies: Using R for Text Analysis in the Digital Humanities." Language Resources and Evaluation, 53(4): 707–733. pdf
• T. Arnold, C. Rivard and L. Tilton (2019) "Building Pedagogy into Project Development: Making Data Construction Visible in Digital Projects." Digital Humanities Quarterly, 13(2). html
• T. Arnold (2019) "Industrial Research in Applied Statistics." Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 66(4). pdf
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2019) "New Data: The Role of Statistics in DH." In: M. Gold and L. Klein (Eds.) Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019. University of Minnesota Press. html
• N. Ballier, E. Pacquetet and T. Arnold (2019) "Investigating Keylogs as Time-Stamped Graphemics." In: Y. Haralambous (Ed.) Graphemics in the 21st Century. Fluxus Editions, pages 353–365. pdf
• T. Arnold, N. Ballier, T. Gaillat and P. Lissón (2018) "Predicting CEFRL Levels in Learner English on the Basis of Metrics and Full Texts." Proceedings of the Conférence sur l'Apprentissage Automatique (CAp 2018). pdf
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2018) "Cross-Discourse and Multilingual Exploration of Textual Corpora with the DualNeighbors Algorithm." Proceedings of the 2nd Joint SIGHUM Workshop. pdf
• T. Arnold (2017) "A Tidy Data Model for Natural Language Processing Using cleanNLP." The R Journal, 9(2): 248–267. pdf
• T. Arnold (2017) "kerasR: Interface to the Keras Deep Learning Library." Journal of Open Source Software, 2(14): 296. pdf
• T. Arnold, M. Kane and S. Urbanek (2017) "High-Performance I/O Tools for R." The R Journal, 9(1): 6–13. pdf
• T. Arnold, P. Leonard and L. Tilton (2017) "Knowledge Creation Through Recommender Systems." Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 32 (Suppl. 2): ii151–ii157. pdf
• T. Arnold, S. Maples, L. Tilton and L. Wexler (2017) "Uncovering Latent Metadata in the FSA-OWI Photographic Archive." Digital Humanities Quarterly, 11(2). html
• T. Arnold and L. Tilton (2017) "Basic Text Processing in R." The Programming Historian, 6(1).
• T. Arnold and R. Tibshirani (2016) "Efficient Implementations of the Generalized Lasso Dual Path Algorithm." Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, 25(1): 1–27. pdf
• T. Grippo, J. Liu, N. Zebardast, T. Arnold, G. Moore and R. Weinreb (2013) "Twenty-Four–Hour Pattern of Intraocular Pressure in Untreated Patients with Ocular Hypertension." Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science, 54(1): 512–517. pdf
• J. Emerson and T. Arnold (2011) "Nonparametric Goodness-of-Fit Tests for Discrete Null Distributions." The R Journal, 3(2): 34–39. pdf
• T. Arnold and J. Emerson (2011) "Statistical Sleuthing by Leveraging Human Nature: A Study of Olympic Figure Skating." The American Statistician, 65(3): 143–148. pdf
• B. Russett and T. Arnold (2010) "Who Talks, and Who's Listening? Networks of International Security Studies." Security Dialogue, 41(6): 589–598. pdf

Software

• T. Arnold and L. Tilton. "Distant Viewing Toolkit for the Analysis of Visual Culture." html
• T. Arnold. "cleanNLP: An R Package and Tidy Data Model for Natural Language Processing." html
• T. Arnold, A. Wei and M. Kane. "ctrialsgov: Query Data from U.S. National Library of Medicine's Clinical Trials Database." html
• T. Arnold. "ggimg: Graphics Layers for Plotting Image Data." html
• T. Arnold. "keylog.js: Local Keylogging with JavaScript." html
• T. Arnold. "ggmaptile: Map Layer for ggplot2." html
• T. Arnold and S. Urbanek. "iotools: I/O Tools for Streaming." html

Training and workshops

• T. Arnold. Foundations of Data Science (Course Notes). html
• T. Arnold. "Initiation au Distant Viewing." Humanistica, Paris, 18 mai 2026. html
• T. Arnold. "Atelier : R pour la linguistique." CORLI, Paris, 23–24 novembre 2025. html

Grants and fellowships

• "Bridging Large-Scale Computational Analysis and the Close Viewing of Film and Television" (2026–2027) Schmidt Sciences, $250,000.
• "Distant Viewing Toolkit: Training and Outreach" (2025–2028) Mellon Foundation, $1,000,000.
• "Distant Viewing Toolkit" (2022–2025) Mellon Foundation, $485,000.
• "PGVis: Digital Public Humanities Software for Visualizing Image Collections" (2022–2025) NEH Level III Digital Humanities Advancement Grant, $324,693.
• "Computing Cultural Heritage in the Cloud: Access and Discovery of Documentary Images (ADDI)" (2021–2022) Library of Congress, $72,000.
• "Images as Data: Processing, Exploration, and Discovery at Scale" (2020–2021) Collections as Data (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation subaward), $37,388.
• Fellow of the Collegium de Lyon, Institut d'Études Avancées (2019–2020).
• "Distant Viewing Toolkit" (2018–2020) NEH Level II Digital Humanities Advancement Grant, $99,984.
• Visiting Faculty Fellowship, Université Paris Diderot (2017).
• "Photogrammar: Seeing and Hearing America's Documentary Record" (2016–2018) American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Digital Extension Grant, $150,000.
• "Participatory Media" (2015–2018) NEH Digital Projects for the Public Discovery Grant, $30,000.
• "Photogrammar" (2011–2015) NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant, $50,000.