Two Critical Inquiry Topic Models

Here are two topic models of Critical Inquiry, generated with the same algorithm but different implementations (MALLET and R topicmodels package, slightly different stopword lists, the latter also was generated with a minimum word frequency of seven):

0 black music musical white african jazz sound performance american racial negro song cultural sounds race rap cage singer composer 1 meaning theory interpretation question philosophy language point claim philosophical sense truth fact argument knowledge intention metaphor text account speech 2 american duke james john trans culture life william things modern cambridge michael david robert soviet shame henry york objects 3 trans time question subject derrida language place order object relation word thing reading moment longer things work thought writing 4 history historical narrative discourse account contemporary terms status context social ways relation discussion essay sense form representation specific position 5 god christian history religious greek ancient modern tradition divine century body early philosophy latin nature religion medieval church soul 6 film cinema films camera screen images frame image movie theater shot early visual cinematic narrative kiss hollywood scene documentary 7 science scientific human knowledge media theory sciences natural studies life social history technology communication machine humanities disciplines system psychology 8 body time game process space affect play form motion hand ways level attention bodies turn making figure physical parts 9 political social politics cultural power culture theory society ideology critique intellectual ideological state economic class liberal struggle revolution marx 10 law legal public case justice trial political war court state violence rights states moral crime speech abuse slave united 11 art painting work visual image picture artist images fig paintings works artists artistic photography aesthetic museum photograph objects object 12 form work time terms art nature individual structure order reality analysis general style works experience concept process elements theory 13 literary literature criticism text reading book work critics texts writing reader fiction language english author readers works read critic 14 life human moral good man sense great experience work fact kind find personal idea mind character people view social 15 time years people day great long house young called read book wrote man word times year men left english 16 story love death man dead face life eyes point scene narrative moment long real james stories heart narrator characters 17 italian di del fig della il fascist spanish inca ii italy autumn giovanni st saint che text building verdi 18 german history benjamin trans historical freud von germany art modern das memory panofsky essay berlin early hegel walter war 19 public war time national city american education work social economic space people urban culture corporate building united market business 20 poetry poem poet language poems poetic poets english lines literary lyric word romantic text verse poetics prose pound milton 21 women sexual female woman male feminist desire sex men sexuality mother gender freud identity body psychoanalytic child psychoanalysis feminine 22 jewish jews israel israeli palestinian state arab jew religious land people political religion identity palestinians muslim islamic rabbi al 23 french en france title sur qui dans paris une paul text ne foucault letter est man jean derrida au 24 cultural european culture colonial western american national chinese african indian native english identity white british racial race south africa

And

[0] “city” “public” “space” “museum” “memorial” “people” “place” “building” “time” “national” “american” “work” “war” “aboriginal” “landscape” “architecture” “land” “fig” “vietnam”

[1] “political” “social” “power” “theory” “politics” “historical” “economic” “class” “history” “work” “form” “foucault” “point” “society” “ideological” “critique” “notion” “production” “order”

[2] “music” “musical” “style” “art” “work” “time” “form” “history” “works” “analysis” “theory” “spatial” “historical” “panofsky” “structure” “individual” “temporal” “concept” “specific”

[3] “black” “white” “american” “cultural” “culture” “african” “racial” “western” “european” “chinese” “indian” “identity” “race” “duke” “social” “colonial” “political” “national” “history”

[4] “women” “sexual” “female” “woman” “feminist” “male” “desire” “freud” “men” “love” “sex” “mother” “psychoanalysis” “sexuality” “man” “gender” “body” “father” “power”

[5] “life” “human” “things” “natural” “nature” “history” “social” “man” “sense” “people” “objects” “time” “thing” “kind” “society” “culture” “cultural” “modern” “object”

[6] “science” “knowledge” “scientific” “studies” “cultural” “social” “history” “academic” “sciences” “education” “american” “humanities” “culture” “work” “study” “disciplines” “students” “discipline” “political”

[7] “slave” “american” “slavery” “york” “time” “law” “shaw” “color” “legal” “story” “captain” “isabel” “political” “slaves” “case” “point” “man” “kafka” “margaret”

[8] “novel” “book” “fiction” “text” “reader” “reading” “work” “james” “read” “characters” “character” “writing” “author” “time” “case” “readers” “moral” “novels” “life”

[9] “war” “german” “memory” “history” “trial” “man” “time” “historical” “political” “life” “holocaust” “trauma” “years” “nazi” “story” “work” “people” “benjamin” “french”

[10] “painting” “picture” “image” “art” “point” “work” “figure” “fig” “mirror” “face” “portrait” “visual” “left” “pictures” “figures” “paintings” “hand” “man” “painter”

[11] “narrative” “story” “events” “historical” “time” “form” “order” “history” “sense” “text” “man” “structure” “discourse” “point” “autumn” “relation” “well” “myth” “human”

[12] “art” “work” “aesthetic” “painting” “works” “modern” “history” “object” “artistic” “artist” “form” “objects” “photography” “modernist” “artists” “abstract” “kind” “historical” “modernism”

[13] “jewish” “god” “religious” “christian” “israel” “palestinian” “israeli” “political” “jews” “history” “state” “religion” “arab” “people” “authority” “power” “palestinians” “benjamin” “jew”

[14] “law” “public” “political” “legal” “speech” “state” “social” “moral” “justice” “rights” “liberal” “child” “court” “case” “violence” “power” “society” “private” “government”

[15] “literary” “literature” “criticism” “work” “history” “writing” “critics” “language” “theory” “texts” “american” “works” “culture” “cultural” “essay” “social” “historical” “sense” “critic”

[16] “poetry” “poem” “poetic” “poet” “poems” “language” “poets” “english” “form” “sense” “lyric” “word” “milton” “lines” “voice” “well” “speaker” “poetics” “kind”

[17] “film” “image” “images” “cinema” “films” “camera” “time” “photograph” “visual” “photographs” “space” “screen” “frame” “photography” “early” “body” “shot” “kiss” “object”

[18] “media” “time” “human” “communication” “game” “machine” “system” “benjamin” “work” “technology” “theory” “modern” “form” “trans” “social” “war” “italian” “medium” “early”

[19] “philosophy” “derrida” “question” “philosophical” “man” “thought” “word” “language” “time” “truth” “sense” “heidegger” “order” “trans” “knowledge” “things” “idea” “work” “place”

[20] “pound” “action” “tragedy” “kind” “kane” “pluralism” “burke” “comic” “thought” “terms” “american” “booth” “nature” “play” “evidence” “drama” “form” “work” “story”

[21] “history” “french” “american” “time” “historical” “modern” “century” “latin” “soviet” “en” “published” “france” “qui” “work” “years” “medieval” “culture” “united” “early”

[22] “jazz” “joyce” “irish” “theater” “play” “ulysses” “modern” “blackface” “suicide” “singer” “bloom” “book” “english” “riddle” “stage” “great” “louis” “jewish” “body”

[23] “meaning” “language” “interpretation” “text” “theory” “metaphor” “reading” “point” “speech” “fact” “intention” “sense” “interpretive” “question” “context” “linguistic” “word” “argument” “literary”

[24] “body” “death” “person” “experience” “human” “life” “psychology” “dead” “shame” “psychological” “mind” “work” “case” “theory” “affect” “bodies” “time” “mental” “torture”

Critical Inquiry is a famous journal, and, while I’m familiar with its contents, I can’t quite decide how well these topics represent it. I’d be curious to hear any thoughts you might have. My ultimate goal is to work on correlating topic modeling with citational analysis (though not with this particular journal of course, because of “The Footnote, in Theory” by Anne H. Stevens and Jay Williams).