Spencer Dean Stewart
Assistant Professor
Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education LibraryFaculty Rank: Assistant Professor
Liaison Areas: Digital Humanities
ILS 201 Intro to Digital Humanities
ILS 630 Digital Humanities Foundations
ILS 650 Computational Text Analysis
Digital Humanities; Cultural Analytics; Digital History; Text Analysis; Modern China; Agricultural and Environmental History
PhD (History), University of Chicago
Assistant Professor, Libraries and School of Information Studies & Department of History, Purdue University (2023-present)
Director of Digital Humanities Graduate Program, Purdue University (2025-present)
D. Kim Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, University of Chicago (2022-2023)
Lecturer, Department of History, University of Utah (2022)
Articles in History
Stewart, Spencer Dean. “A Reluctant Expert: John B. Griffing, Agricultural Missionaries, and the Transformation of Agricultural Development, 1920s–1950s.” Agricultural History 99, no. 2 (2025): 243-274. https://doi.org/10.1215/00021482-11625402
Stewart, Spencer and Eliza McKinney. “Who Tells Your Story? Analyzing a Century of Utah History.” Utah Historical Quarterly 91, no. 1 (2023). https://doi.org/10.5406/26428652.91.1.04
Stewart, Spencer. “A Community Crop: Cotton, Science, and Extension in Interwar Shandong, 1918-1937.” Twentieth-Century China 46, no. 2 (2021): 199-219. https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2021.0015
Stewart, Spencer. “向中国学习: 施永高, 中美农业交流及历史价值” [Learning from China: Walter T. Swingle, U.S.-China Agricultural Exchange, and the Value of History]. 中国农史 [Agricultural History of China], no. 6 (2019): 29-39. http://zgns.paperonce.org/oa/DArticle.aspx?type=view&id=20190603
Articles in Digital Humanities
Kommers, Cody, Eamon Duede, Julia Gordon, Ari Holtzman, Tess McNulty, Spencer Stewart, Lindsay Thomas, Richard Jean So, and Hoyt Long. “Why Slop Matters.” ACM AI Letters 1, no. 1 (2026): 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3786777.
Gladstone, Clovis, Zhao Fang, and Spencer Dean Stewart. “Ground Truth Generation for Multilingual Historical NLP using LLMs.” Anthology of Computers and the Humanities 3 (2025). https://doi.org/10.63744/UWoDSxRk90Vn.
Stewart, Spencer Dean, and Sanskriti Sinha. “Retrieving Information from Unstructured Historical Sources Using Large Language Models.” Computational Humanities Research 1 (2025): e17. https://doi.org/10.1017/chr.2025.10019.
Fang, Zhao, Liang-Chun Wu, Xuening Kong, and Spencer Stewart. “A Comparative Analysis of Word Segmentation, Part-of-Speech Tagging, and Named Entity Recognition for Historical Chinese Sources, 1900-1950.” NLP4DH 2025 (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2503.19844.
Stewart, Spencer. “A Methodology for Studying Linguistic and Cultural Change in China, 1900-1950.” CHR 2024: Computational Humanities Research Conference (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2502.04286.
Datasets
Stewart, Spencer Dean and Marshall Butler. “A Large-Scale Annotated Dataset of Contemporary Latter-day Saint Worship Services in the United States,” Journal of the Mormon Social Science Association 4, no. 1 (2026): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.54587/JMSSA.0401
Yan Duan, Adam K. Frost, and Spencer Dean Stewart. “An Empire of Their Own? A Longitudinal Dataset of Cotton Production and Industry in Republican China, 1919-1937.” Research Data Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences 10 (2026): 1-14.
Duan, Yan, Adam K. Frost, and Spencer Stewart. Cotton Production in Republican China: A Longitudinal Dataset (1919–1937). July 2025. https://doi.org/10.4231/S460-H323.
Book Reviews
“Review of James Lin, In the Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan.” Journal of Asian Studies 85, no. 3 (2026): 724-725.
“Review of Ruisheng Zhang, A Study of China-US Transnational Agricultural History, 1925–1949 [中美跨國農業史研究 1925–1949].” Agricultural History 100, no. 2 (2026): 302-304.
“Review of Jo Guldi, The Dangerous Art of Text Mining: A Methodology for Digital History.” H-History-and-Theory, H-Net Reviews (March 2024).
“Review of Jia-Chen Fu, The Other Milk: Reinventing Soy in Republican China.” H-Environment, H-Net Reviews (March 2021).
“Review of Sigrid Schmalzer, Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China.” PRC History Review Book Review Series, no. 1 (June 2018).
PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION
Faculty Rank: Assistant Professor
Liaison Areas: Digital Humanities
ILS 201 Intro to Digital Humanities
ILS 630 Digital Humanities Foundations
ILS 650 Computational Text Analysis
Digital Humanities; Cultural Analytics; Digital History; Text Analysis; Modern China; Agricultural and Environmental History
PhD (History), University of Chicago
Assistant Professor, Libraries and School of Information Studies & Department of History, Purdue University (2023-present)
Director of Digital Humanities Graduate Program, Purdue University (2025-present)
D. Kim Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, University of Chicago (2022-2023)
Lecturer, Department of History, University of Utah (2022)
PUBLICATIONS
Articles in History
Stewart, Spencer Dean. “A Reluctant Expert: John B. Griffing, Agricultural Missionaries, and the Transformation of Agricultural Development, 1920s–1950s.” Agricultural History 99, no. 2 (2025): 243-274. https://doi.org/10.1215/00021482-11625402
Stewart, Spencer and Eliza McKinney. “Who Tells Your Story? Analyzing a Century of Utah History.” Utah Historical Quarterly 91, no. 1 (2023). https://doi.org/10.5406/26428652.91.1.04
Stewart, Spencer. “A Community Crop: Cotton, Science, and Extension in Interwar Shandong, 1918-1937.” Twentieth-Century China 46, no. 2 (2021): 199-219. https://doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2021.0015
Stewart, Spencer. “向中国学习: 施永高, 中美农业交流及历史价值” [Learning from China: Walter T. Swingle, U.S.-China Agricultural Exchange, and the Value of History]. 中国农史 [Agricultural History of China], no. 6 (2019): 29-39. http://zgns.paperonce.org/oa/DArticle.aspx?type=view&id=20190603
Articles in Digital Humanities
Kommers, Cody, Eamon Duede, Julia Gordon, Ari Holtzman, Tess McNulty, Spencer Stewart, Lindsay Thomas, Richard Jean So, and Hoyt Long. “Why Slop Matters.” ACM AI Letters 1, no. 1 (2026): 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3786777.
Gladstone, Clovis, Zhao Fang, and Spencer Dean Stewart. “Ground Truth Generation for Multilingual Historical NLP using LLMs.” Anthology of Computers and the Humanities 3 (2025). https://doi.org/10.63744/UWoDSxRk90Vn.
Stewart, Spencer Dean, and Sanskriti Sinha. “Retrieving Information from Unstructured Historical Sources Using Large Language Models.” Computational Humanities Research 1 (2025): e17. https://doi.org/10.1017/chr.2025.10019.
Fang, Zhao, Liang-Chun Wu, Xuening Kong, and Spencer Stewart. “A Comparative Analysis of Word Segmentation, Part-of-Speech Tagging, and Named Entity Recognition for Historical Chinese Sources, 1900-1950.” NLP4DH 2025 (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2503.19844.
Stewart, Spencer. “A Methodology for Studying Linguistic and Cultural Change in China, 1900-1950.” CHR 2024: Computational Humanities Research Conference (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2502.04286.
Datasets
Stewart, Spencer Dean and Marshall Butler. “A Large-Scale Annotated Dataset of Contemporary Latter-day Saint Worship Services in the United States,” Journal of the Mormon Social Science Association 4, no. 1 (2026): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.54587/JMSSA.0401
Yan Duan, Adam K. Frost, and Spencer Dean Stewart. “An Empire of Their Own? A Longitudinal Dataset of Cotton Production and Industry in Republican China, 1919-1937.” Research Data Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences 10 (2026): 1-14.
Duan, Yan, Adam K. Frost, and Spencer Stewart. Cotton Production in Republican China: A Longitudinal Dataset (1919–1937). July 2025. https://doi.org/10.4231/S460-H323.
Book Reviews
“Review of James Lin, In the Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan.” Journal of Asian Studies 85, no. 3 (2026): 724-725.
“Review of Ruisheng Zhang, A Study of China-US Transnational Agricultural History, 1925–1949 [中美跨國農業史研究 1925–1949].” Agricultural History 100, no. 2 (2026): 302-304.
“Review of Jo Guldi, The Dangerous Art of Text Mining: A Methodology for Digital History.” H-History-and-Theory, H-Net Reviews (March 2024).
“Review of Jia-Chen Fu, The Other Milk: Reinventing Soy in Republican China.” H-Environment, H-Net Reviews (March 2021).
“Review of Sigrid Schmalzer, Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China.” PRC History Review Book Review Series, no. 1 (June 2018).