{ "model": { "rank": 5941, "code": "thing-q233762", "model_id": "vr.tr.american-literature", "name": "American literature", "purpose": "Enable an AI agent to identify a corpus as American literature, assess the evidence and limits of its representation, and choose justified actions for interpreting, comparing, teaching or extending it.", "family": "Thing Registry", "category": "Information and virtual systems", "status": "research-draft", "kind": "thing", "plane": "INF", "domain": "INF.MED", "industry": "", "version": "", "url": "/models/thing/q233762/", "tier": 2, "score": 63, "payload": { "layer": "wikidata", "aliases": [ "Amerindian literature in the United States", "American literature in Spanish", "Western American Literature", "American fiction", "American ethnic literature", "Jewish American literature", "Mexican American literature", "African American literature", "American children and young adult literature", "Asian-American literature", "American literary regionalism", "Chicana literature", "Black lesbian literature in the United States" ], "aliasCount": 13, "merged": 13, "knownIn": 63, "facets": null, "markers": [], "lexicalClass": "", "senseRank": null, "alsoRegisteredAs": null, "source": { "dataset": "wikidata", "item": "Q233762", "url": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q233762", "license": "CC0 1.0" } }, "research": { "vercy": "1.0-draft", "publication": { "status": "research-draft", "adjudicationStatus": "unreviewed", "publishableCanonical": false, "generatedAt": "2026-09-07T10:15:22Z", "providers": [ "Codex", "Grok" ], "missingProviders": [], "pass": 2, "cost": { "grok": { "usd": 0.04552724, "turns": 3, "seconds": 163.9, "error": null }, "codex": { "seconds": 89.8, "error": "Reading additional input from stdin...\nOpenAI Codex v0.153.3\n--------\nworkdir: R:\\02_PROJECTS\\02_Meta_Models_Platforms\\Ver.cy\\current\\thing-registry-backlog\nmodel: gpt-6-astra\nprovider: openai\napproval: never\nsandbox: read-only\nreasoning effort: none\nreasoning summaries: none\nsession id: 01a07b5b-0a3b-7183-badf-e7aab706af84\n--------\nuser\nYou are drafting a Vercy meta-model for one registered thing. Answer as JSON only, no prose around it.\n\nThing: American literature\nRegistry id: vr.tr.american-literature\nPlane / domain: INF / INF.MED\nRegistry definition: (none recorded)\nNames folded into this " } } }, "metaModel": { "id": "THING-Q233762", "registryId": "vr.tr.american-literature", "name": "American literature", "version": "0.1.0-research.1", "entryKind": "thing", "family": "Thing Registry", "domain": [ "INF.MED" ], "status": "research-draft" }, "canonicalUrl": "https://ver.cy/models/thing/q233762/", "model": { "registry_id": "vr.tr.american-literature", "name": "American literature", "purpose": "Enable an AI agent to identify a corpus as American literature, assess the evidence and limits of its representation, and choose justified actions for interpreting, comparing, teaching or extending it.", "definition": "American literature is the national-literature category used by libraries, schools, and literary historians for writing produced in the United States and the British colonies that preceded it - mainly English-language, but in current scholarship also oral Indigenous and other non-English U.S. writing - periodized against American political and social history rather than treated as a language or a single genre.", "scope_statement": "This model owns American literature as a bounded, revisable literary corpus and field of interpretation, recording grounds for inclusion, textual traditions, historical relationships, circulation and contested representation while keeping the geographical meaning of 'American' explicit.", "in_scope": [ "Criteria connecting works and literary practices to the United States, its antecedent formations, territories and transnational relationships", "Relationships among Indigenous, settler, diasporic, regional and multilingual literary traditions", "Literary forms, aesthetic practices, periodizations and interpretive disagreements", "Publication, translation, performance, readership and canon formation", "Corpus coverage, textual availability and evidence supporting interpretive or curatorial actions" ], "out_of_scope": [ "Comprehensive author biographies and personal identity records", "General United States political, social or economic history independent of literary relationships", "Complete bibliographic descriptions and edition-level cataloguing", "Copyright determinations and licence administration for individual works", "Literature of the Americas as a whole unless explicitly adopted as this corpus's geographical scope" ], "distinguishing_features": [ "An included work has an explicit literary and American connection; publication or sale in the United States alone does not establish inclusion.", "The corpus states whether 'American' means United States-oriented or hemispheric, allowing it to be distinguished from literature of the Americas generally.", "English-language composition is neither a sufficient nor a necessary inclusion test; the corpus records its treatment of other languages and translation.", "Indigenous works are situated through the relevant peoples, nations and traditions rather than being assigned American identity solely from present-day borders.", "Literary selection and interpretation are explicit, distinguishing the corpus from an undifferentiated collection of documents about the United States." ], "characteristics": [ { "name": "Geographical interpretation of American", "kind": "category", "unit_or_values": "United States-oriented; hemispheric; another explicitly defined scope; unresolved", "why_it_matters": "Determines which neighbouring literatures and territorial relationships require inclusion or boundary decisions." }, { "name": "Grounds for corpus inclusion", "kind": "relation", "unit_or_values": "Work or practice linked to inclusion grounds such as affiliation, composition context, literary community, circulation or reception", "why_it_matters": "Prevents birthplace, citizenship or setting from silently becoming the sole admission rule." }, { "name": "Language and translation coverage", "kind": "category", "unit_or_values": "Named languages and varieties, with original-language, translated, bilingual or multilingual status", "why_it_matters": "Exposes linguistic exclusions and distinguishes properties of source texts from translation choices." }, { "name": "Temporal coverage", "kind": "measurement", "unit_or_values": "Date intervals with calendar, precision and composition, performance or publication basis stated", "why_it_matters": "Makes comparisons across colonial, national and contemporary frames interpretable." }, { "name": "Literary form and medium", "kind": "category", "unit_or_values": "Locally justified forms such as novel, poetry, drama, essay, oral narrative, testimony or digital literature; multiple values allowed", "why_it_matters": "Supports comparison without assuming that print genres exhaust literary practice." }, { "name": "Community and tradition relationships", "kind": "relation", "unit_or_values": "Attributed connections to named literary communities, peoples, nations, regions or movements, with attribution basis", "why_it_matters": "Supports situated interpretation while preserving disputed or overlapping affiliations." }, { "name": "Representation against a declared comparison set", "kind": "measurement", "unit_or_values": "Counts and proportions by declared dimension, with denominator, selection method and unknown values", "why_it_matters": "Allows coverage claims to be checked without treating an unavailable total literature as a measurable denominator." }, { "name": "Interpretive assessment status", "kind": "state", "unit_or_values": "Unassessed; evidence-supported within stated limits; contested; revision needed", "why_it_matters": "Signals whether an agent may reuse an interpretation or should seek further evidence." } ], "affordances": [ "Evaluate a proposed addition against explicit American-literature inclusion criteria and record unresolved affiliations.", "Construct reading sets across periods, languages and traditions while explaining selection limits.", "Compare literary treatments of nationhood, sovereignty, migration, race, region or belonging using identified textual evidence.", "Audit a syllabus, anthology or digital corpus for exclusions relative to its declared scope.", "Trace how editions, translations, institutions and readerships shape a work's place in American literature.", "Recommend further research or bounded interpretive use when textual evidence, contextual knowledge or access conditions remain incomplete." ] }, "sources": [ { "id": "britannica-american-literature", "title": "American literature - Encyclopaedia Britannica (Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.)", "url": "https://www.britannica.com/art/american-literature", "what_it_supports": "Standard English-language definition; conventional six-period survey chronology from pre-colonization through the contemporary period.", "url_status": "blocked" }, { "id": "wikipedia-american-literature", "title": "American literature - Wikipedia (Wikimedia Foundation)", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_literature", "what_it_supports": "Scope including colonial antecedents, non-English writing, Native American oral literature, and the main period and tradition distinctions used in practice.", "url_status": "live" }, { "id": "wikidata-q233762", "title": "American literature (Q233762) - Wikidata (Wikimedia Foundation)", "url": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q233762", "what_it_supports": "Stable identifiers: Wikidata Q233762, LCSH sh85004336, LCC PS, Dewey 810, and the short description as literature written by Americans or related to the United States.", "url_status": "live" }, { "id": "lcsh-sh85004336", "title": "American literature - LC Linked Data Service (Library of Congress)", "url": "http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85004336.html", "what_it_supports": "Authoritative subject heading, variant 'English literature--United States', broader term United States--Literatures, and form narrower terms (poetry, drama, fiction, essays).", "url_status": "blocked" }, { "id": "clep-american-literature", "title": "American Literature Exam - CLEP (College Board)", "url": "https://clep.collegeboard.org/clep-exams/american-literature", "what_it_supports": "How U.S. college surveys actually slice the corpus by period and the approximate exam weights for each slice.", "url_status": "live" }, { "id": "delbanco-daedalus-2006", "title": "American literature: a vanishing subject? - Daedalus (American Academy of Arts and Sciences)", "url": "https://www.amacad.org/publication/daedalus/american-literature-vanishing-subject", "what_it_supports": "History of the academic field, from 19th-century cyclopedias through the MLA American Literature Section (1921) and the professional label 'Americanist'.", "url_status": "blocked" } ], "structure": { "bundles": [ { "id": "american-scope-and-belonging", "name": "American scope and belonging", "description": "Records what 'American' means for this corpus and how works acquire, resist or complicate that designation.", "rationale": "The registry name alone cannot resolve national, hemispheric, territorial or sovereign boundaries.", "layers": [ { "id": "geographical-and-historical-boundaries", "name": "Geographical and historical boundaries", "description": "Makes the corpus's geographical frame and its application across time explicit.", "findings": [ { "id": "declared-american-frame", "name": "Declared American frame", "description": "Record the operative meaning of American and the reasoning used for colonial antecedents, changing borders and territories.", "questions": [ { "text": "Does this corpus use American to mean United States-oriented literature, literature of the Americas or another explicitly bounded field?", "kind": "definition", "id": "declared-american-frame-q01" }, { "text": "How are works preceding United States statehood or connected to territories and changing borders included without assuming present-day boundaries applied at composition?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "declared-american-frame-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "affiliation-and-sovereignty", "name": "Affiliation and sovereignty", "description": "Separates literary affiliation from automatic assignment through citizenship or location.", "findings": [ { "id": "situated-inclusion-grounds", "name": "Situated inclusion grounds", "description": "Record attributed inclusion grounds and competing affiliations, including Indigenous sovereignty and diasporic or expatriate relationships.", "questions": [ { "text": "Whose statements or scholarship support describing this work or tradition as part of American literature?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "situated-inclusion-grounds-q01" }, { "text": "When an Indigenous nation, diasporic community or author uses a different affiliation, how should inclusion preserve that distinction?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "situated-inclusion-grounds-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "languages-forms-and-transmission", "name": "Languages, forms and transmission", "description": "Records the linguistic and expressive practices through which this corpus becomes available as literature.", "rationale": "An English-only or print-only default could determine the corpus before its scope has been examined.", "layers": [ { "id": "multilingual-textual-relations", "name": "Multilingual textual relations", "description": "Tracks languages, varieties and translations relevant to reading across American literary traditions.", "findings": [ { "id": "language-and-translation-basis", "name": "Language and translation basis", "description": "Record the linguistic basis of interpretation and distinguish source-language expression from translated or editorially standardized presentation.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which languages, varieties and instances of code-switching occur in the selected works, and which are accessible only through translation?", "kind": "definition", "id": "language-and-translation-basis-q01" }, { "text": "Which translator or editor mediates the version being read, and what evidence identifies consequential changes in voice or linguistic difference?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "language-and-translation-basis-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "literary-status-and-medium", "name": "Literary status and medium", "description": "Examines inclusion across written, oral, performed and digital forms.", "findings": [ { "id": "form-and-transmission-context", "name": "Form and transmission context", "description": "Record why a practice is treated as literary and how its medium or transmission affects interpretation.", "questions": [ { "text": "What stated criteria admit forms such as oral narrative, sermon, testimony or song into this American-literature corpus?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "form-and-transmission-context-q01" }, { "text": "For an oral or performed work, who recorded or transcribed the available version, and what performance or community context does that version preserve?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "form-and-transmission-context-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "histories-and-literary-interpretation", "name": "Histories and literary interpretation", "description": "Connects literary change and interpretive claims to evidence without treating national history as a sufficient explanation.", "rationale": "Agents need to distinguish useful historical frames from imposed period labels and unsupported claims about American experience.", "layers": [ { "id": "periods-movements-and-regions", "name": "Periods, movements and regions", "description": "Records the use and limits of temporal, aesthetic and regional groupings.", "findings": [ { "id": "qualified-literary-placement", "name": "Qualified literary placement", "description": "Record evidence for assigning works to periods, movements or regional traditions while allowing overlapping chronologies.", "questions": [ { "text": "What textual features, participant statements or scholarship support the proposed period, movement or regional placement?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "qualified-literary-placement-q01" }, { "text": "Where does a national periodization obscure a different chronology within an Indigenous, African American, diasporic or other relevant tradition?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "qualified-literary-placement-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "text-history-and-contested-readings", "name": "Text, history and contested readings", "description": "Relates close reading to historical questions and preserves interpretive disagreement.", "findings": [ { "id": "supported-american-literary-reading", "name": "Supported American literary reading", "description": "Record interpretations of matters such as settlement, enslavement, migration, citizenship or region as claims requiring textual and contextual support.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which passages and formal choices support the proposed reading, and what contextual evidence connects them to the relevant American historical question?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "supported-american-literary-reading-q01" }, { "text": "What counterevidence or competing interpretation must an agent consider before using this reading in a comparison or teaching explanation?", "kind": "action", "id": "supported-american-literary-reading-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "circulation-reception-and-canon", "name": "Circulation, reception and canon", "description": "Records how works reach readers and acquire or lose standing within accounts of American literature.", "rationale": "Availability, popularity and canonical recognition describe different conditions and should support different judgments.", "layers": [ { "id": "literary-circulation-networks", "name": "Literary circulation networks", "description": "Tracks relevant routes through publishing, periodicals, performance, translation and community distribution.", "findings": [ { "id": "documented-routes-to-readers", "name": "Documented routes to readers", "description": "Record evidenced circulation routes, including community and transnational networks that a national publishing frame may miss.", "questions": [ { "text": "Through which publishers, periodicals, performance settings or community networks did the work reach its documented audiences?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "documented-routes-to-readers-q01" }, { "text": "Which circulation indicators are available, for what dates and populations, and what do they leave unknown about actual readership?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "documented-routes-to-readers-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "institutional-selection-and-reception", "name": "Institutional selection and reception", "description": "Examines how named institutions and audiences confer literary visibility.", "findings": [ { "id": "situated-canonical-standing", "name": "Situated canonical standing", "description": "Record recognition within identified anthologies, curricula, prizes or critical communities without treating recognition as universal literary value.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which dated anthologies, syllabi, awards or critical debates support the claimed standing of this work within American literature?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "situated-canonical-standing-q01" }, { "text": "Whose reception differs from that institutional account, and what evidence supports the difference?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "situated-canonical-standing-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "corpus-assessment-and-responsible-use", "name": "Corpus assessment and responsible use", "description": "Assesses what a selected corpus can support and what conditions govern proposed uses.", "rationale": "An agent must judge representational limits and textual suitability before generalizing, teaching or redistributing material.", "layers": [ { "id": "coverage-and-archival-limits", "name": "Coverage and archival limits", "description": "Tests representation against a declared selection frame and distinguishes missing evidence from literary absence.", "findings": [ { "id": "bounded-representation-assessment", "name": "Bounded representation assessment", "description": "Record coverage across relevant languages, communities, periods, regions and forms, alongside preservation and digitization limits.", "questions": [ { "text": "Against which declared bibliography, archive or selection frame are coverage counts calculated, and which affiliations remain unknown or multiply assigned?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "bounded-representation-assessment-q01" }, { "text": "Which apparent gaps may reflect collection, preservation, cataloguing or digitization practices rather than an absence of literary production?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "bounded-representation-assessment-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "fitness-for-proposed-use", "name": "Fitness for proposed use", "description": "Connects corpus condition and documented access requirements to specific agent actions.", "findings": [ { "id": "justified-reading-and-reuse-actions", "name": "Justified reading and reuse actions", "description": "Record whether available versions and contextual evidence support a proposed reading set, comparison, quotation or computational use, referring rights decisions to the relevant records.", "questions": [ { "text": "Does the proposed teaching, comparative or computational use remain justified given missing languages, edition differences, OCR errors and selection bias?", "kind": "action", "id": "justified-reading-and-reuse-actions-q01" }, { "text": "Which linked rights records, archive conditions or documented community protocols apply to the selected material and proposed action?", "kind": "action", "id": "justified-reading-and-reuse-actions-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "evidence-and-external-alignment", "name": "Evidence and external alignment", "description": "What the world already says about this thing, gathered so the model can be checked against it.", "rationale": "A model that cannot be lined up against existing standards, identifiers and practice cannot be adopted by anyone who already uses them.", "layers": [ { "id": "reported-evidence", "name": "Reported evidence", "description": "Findings from the breadth pass, kept separate from the structural claims.", "findings": [ { "id": "evidence-kinds", "name": "Kinds and varieties", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ "Colonial and early national writing (beginnings-c. 1830)", "Romantic and Transcendentalist literature (c. 1830-1870)", "Realism, naturalism, and local-color regionalism (c. 1865-1910)", "Modernist literature (c. 1910-1945)", "Contemporary literature (1945-present)", "African American literature, including the Harlem Renaissance", "Native American oral and written literatures", "Multilingual and ethnic U.S. literatures (including Spanish-, Yiddish-, Asian American, and Latinx writing)" ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-kinds-q01", "text": "Which of these kinds and varieties hold for the sense of American literature this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-identifiers", "name": "Identifiers and schemes", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ { "scheme": "Wikidata", "value_or_pattern": "Q233762", "note": "Item 'American literature'; also labelled literature of the USA." }, { "scheme": "Library of Congress Subject Headings", "value_or_pattern": "sh85004336", "note": "Authorized heading American literature; variant English literature--United States; URI id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85004336." }, { "scheme": "Library of Congress Classification", "value_or_pattern": "PS1-PS3626", "note": "Subclass PS, American literature; individual authors by period under PS700-PS3626. Canadian literature was historically PS8001-PS8599." }, { "scheme": "Dewey Decimal Classification", "value_or_pattern": "810", "note": "American literature in English (DDC 800s literature by language/national tradition)." } ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-identifiers-q01", "text": "Which of these identifiers and schemes hold for the sense of American literature this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-standards-and-regulation", "name": "Standards and regulation", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ "Library of Congress Subject Headings, authorized heading 'American literature' (sh85004336) - Library of Congress", "Library of Congress Classification, subclass PS (American literature) - Library of Congress", "Dewey Decimal Classification 810, American literature in English - OCLC", "United States Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. (reproduction, term, and public-domain status of works in the corpus) - United States Congress", "MLA Handbook citation practice for literary works - Modern Language Association" ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-standards-and-regulation-q01", "text": "Which of these standards and regulation hold for the sense of American literature this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-real-world-use", "name": "Real-world use", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ "Taught as a chronological college survey (and as the College Board CLEP American Literature exam) covering prose and poetry from precolonial times to the present.", "Shelved and indexed as a national literature: LCC subclass PS in research libraries; DDC 810 in many public libraries.", "Packaged in multi-volume teaching anthologies and in named prize canons (Pulitzer, National Book Award, Nobel).", "Used in secondary and A-level syllabi outside the United States, often as a bounded period option rather than a full national survey.", "Encountered as the object of school and library collection decisions, including challenges and removals of individual titles." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-real-world-use-q01", "text": "Which of these real-world use hold for the sense of American literature this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-measurements", "name": "Typical measurements", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ { "quantity": "Conventional written-corpus span in survey teaching", "typical_range": "early 17th century to the present (oral Indigenous traditions treated as prior)", "unit": "year" }, { "quantity": "CLEP American Literature exam share by period", "typical_range": "precolonial-1800 about 15; Romantic about 20; realism/naturalism about 20; modernist about 20; contemporary about 25", "unit": "percent of exam items" }, { "quantity": "Output of major American colonial presses, 1696-1700", "typical_range": "about 250 separate items", "unit": "bibliographic item" } ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-measurements-q01", "text": "Which of these typical measurements hold for the sense of American literature this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-failure-modes-and-hazards", "name": "Failure modes and hazards", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ "English-only definitions erase Spanish, French, German, Yiddish, Arabic, and Indigenous-language works produced in the same territory.", "Equating 'American' with the United States collides with hemispheric use of 'American' and with tribal literatures whose territories cross national borders.", "Canon formation that treats a white, male, New England core as the whole of the corpus.", "School and library challenges that remove works from the taught or circulating corpus.", "Unstable membership rules for expatriate and dual-national writers (for example T. S. Eliot or Henry James) without an explicit inclusion test.", "Confusing the academic field (Americanist literary study) with the corpus of works itself." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-failure-modes-and-hazards-q01", "text": "Which of these failure modes and hazards hold for the sense of American literature this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-regional-variation", "name": "Regional variation", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ "In Spanish, literatura estadounidense names U.S. writing; literatura americana is often hemispheric or Latin American, not a synonym.", "UK secondary and university syllabi commonly teach a period slice (for example OCR A-level American Literature 1880-1940) rather than a beginnings-to-present national survey.", "Library of Congress Classification historically filed Canadian literature under PS (PS8001-PS8599), so 'American' on the shelf was once North American in part.", "Inside the United States, Southern, Western, and New England writing are taught as distinct regional canons under the same national heading.", "Hemispheric American studies programmes treat 'American literature' as literature of the Americas, not of the United States alone." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-regional-variation-q01", "text": "Which of these regional variation hold for the sense of American literature this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-neighbours", "name": "Neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart", "description": "Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.", "evidence": [ { "name": "English literature", "difference": "English literature is the literature of England/Britain (LCC PR); American literature is the U.S. national corpus (LCC PS) even when the language is English. Test: national-political affiliation of the corpus, not language." }, { "name": "Canadian literature", "difference": "A separate national corpus; the test is whether the work is produced in or assigned to Canada. Historical LCC practice that placed it under PS is a cataloguing artefact, not membership." }, { "name": "Latin American literature / literature of the Americas", "difference": "Hemispheric frame versus United States frame. Test: whether 'American' means the United States or the continents." }, { "name": "American English", "difference": "A language variety; American literature is a body of works. Test: whether the object is a dialect/standard of English or a corpus of texts." }, { "name": "Native American literature", "difference": "Often catalogued as a subset of American literature, but tribal affiliation, oral tradition, and transnational territorial frames do not coincide with the U.S. nation-state. Test: Indigenous nation/territory versus U.S. national cataloguing." }, { "name": "American studies", "difference": "An interdisciplinary area-studies field (history, politics, culture); American literature is the literary corpus. Test: whether the object is texts-as-literature or the United States as a cultural-political whole." } ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-neighbours-q01", "text": "Which of these neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart hold for the sense of American literature this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] } ] } ] } ] }, "openQuestions": [ "Does the registry intend American literature to mean United States-oriented literature or literature of the Americas, and which neighbouring registry entries establish that boundary?", "Which scholarly and community sources should govern inclusion where national literary classification overlaps with Indigenous sovereignty or contested territorial affiliation?", "What criteria should this model adopt for oral traditions, testimony, religious writing, song and digital expression at the boundary of literature?", "Which comparison sets can support credible coverage assessments across languages and traditions without reproducing a single anthology's selection?", "Which periodizations and interpretive frameworks can be supported across the intended corpus, and where must parallel or conflicting accounts remain explicit?" ], "statistics": { "bundles": 6, "layers": 11, "findings": 18, "questions": 28 } }, "draft": { "generator": "vr.draft.v3", "status": "draft-generated", "researched": false, "archetype": "work, medium or creative form", "method": "Written from the archetype playbook - what this kind of thing needs beyond identity and provenance - and from the structure that recurred across 6,333 models already researched by two engines. Applied to this entry by rule. No source was read for this thing and no claim here is researched. This entry carries no facets of its own, so they were inferred from its domain - a guess about a whole domain applied to one thing.", "facetsInferred": true, "nextPass": "A researcher replaces this draft with a sourced specification. Treat every sentence below as a proposal to argue with.", "purpose": "Give an agent a durable, checkable way to recognise a American literature, record what state it is in, and decide what may be done with it.", "whatItIs": "Enable an AI agent to identify a corpus as American literature, assess the evidence and limits of its representation, and choose justified actions for interpreting, comparing, teaching or extending it.", "characteristics": { "substance": "information", "origin": "conceptual", "agency": "inert" }, "whatYouCanDoWithIt": [ "read and interpreted", "observed and measured" ], "distinguishingFeatures": [ "Names folded into this entry, which a task may need to split apart again: Amerindian literature in the United States, American literature in Spanish, Western American Literature, American fiction, American ethnic literature, Jewish American literature, Mexican American literature, African American literature, American children and young adult literature, Asian-American literature, American literary regionalism, Chicana literature.", "13 finer distinctions are held as aliases rather than separate entries, because telling them apart needs a task that asks for it.", "Described in 63 Wikipedia languages, which is a measure of how widely the thing is known, not of how important it is." ], "openQuestionsForResearch": [ "Which of the bundles below does a real task actually need, and which are ceremony?", "What does this thing have that the facets do not capture at all?", "Which neighbouring kind is most often confused with a American literature, and on what evidence are they told apart?" ], "whatItIsMadeOf": "content that has to be carried by something else", "physicalCharacter": [ "Does nothing on its own; everything it does, something else did to it.", "These come from the domain this entry sits in rather than from the entry itself, so treat them as a first guess about the whole domain applied to one thing." ], "whatCanBeDoneWithIt": [ "read it and act on what it says", "observe it, measure it, record its state" ], "howItIsRecognised": [ "What is seen is a copy or a performance, not the work. Recognising the work means recognising the content through whatever is carrying it." ], "relatedModels": [ { "relation": "covers", "note": "Finer kinds folded into this entry because telling them apart needs a task that asks for it. Each is a model waiting to be split out when one does.", "targets": [ "Amerindian literature in the United States", "American literature in Spanish", "Western American Literature", "American fiction", "American ethnic literature", "Jewish American literature", "Mexican American literature", "African American literature", "American children and young adult literature", "Asian-American literature", "American literary regionalism", "Chicana literature" ] } ], "standing": "Described in 63 Wikipedia languages, which measures how widely it is written about rather than how important or how common it is. 13 finer distinctions are held inside this entry as names rather than as separate models.", "structure": { "bundles": [ { "id": "identity-and-classification", "name": "Identity, naming and classification", "description": "How an agent tells one American literature from another, and a American literature from things that resemble it.", "rationale": "Recognition comes before every other claim. Without stable identity nothing else in the model can be trusted to be about the same thing twice.", "layers": [ { "id": "naming-and-identifiers", "name": "Names and identifiers", "description": "The names this thing goes by and the identifiers that survive translation and time.", "findings": [ { "id": "preferred-name-and-aliases", "name": "Preferred name, aliases and local names", "description": "Which name to use, which names mean the same thing, and which merely sound similar.", "questions": [ { "id": "preferred-name-and-aliases-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the name of a American literature, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "preferred-name-and-aliases-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the name of a American literature, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "preferred-name-and-aliases-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the name of a American literature is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] }, { "id": "stable-identifiers", "name": "Stable identifiers and external keys", "description": "Identifiers that keep pointing at this kind of thing across systems and languages.", "questions": [ { "id": "stable-identifiers-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes an identifier for a American literature, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "stable-identifiers-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about an identifier for a American literature, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "stable-identifiers-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once an identifier for a American literature is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "classification-and-granularity", "name": "Classification and granularity", "description": "Where a American literature sits among kinds, and how finely a task needs to cut it.", "findings": [ { "id": "kind-and-parents", "name": "Kind, parents and neighbouring kinds", "description": "The classes this thing belongs to and the ones it is next to.", "questions": [ { "id": "kind-and-parents-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the kind of a American literature, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "kind-and-parents-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the kind of a American literature, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "kind-and-parents-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the kind of a American literature is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] }, { "id": "distinguishing-features", "name": "Distinguishing features", "description": "What separates a American literature from the things most often confused with it.", "questions": [ { "id": "distinguishing-features-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes what distinguishes a American literature, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "distinguishing-features-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about what distinguishes a American literature, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "distinguishing-features-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once what distinguishes a American literature is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "state-and-lifecycle", "name": "State and lifecycle", "description": "The states a American literature passes through and the events that move it between them.", "rationale": "Most decisions about a thing depend on what state it is in now, which is a claim with a time on it, not a property.", "layers": [ { "id": "lifecycle-stages", "name": "Lifecycle stages", "description": "From coming into existence to ceasing to be one of these.", "findings": [ { "id": "stages-and-transitions", "name": "Stages and transitions", "description": "The stages worth naming and what moves a American literature between them.", "questions": [ { "id": "stages-and-transitions-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the lifecycle of a American literature, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "stages-and-transitions-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the lifecycle of a American literature, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "stages-and-transitions-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the lifecycle of a American literature is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "observations-and-status", "name": "Observations and current status", "description": "What is observed about a American literature, how often and by whom.", "findings": [ { "id": "observation-record", "name": "Observation record", "description": "How an observation of a American literature is recorded so that it can be superseded rather than overwritten.", "questions": [ { "id": "observation-record-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes an observation of a American literature, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "observation-record-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about an observation of a American literature, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "observation-record-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once an observation of a American literature is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "content-and-access", "name": "Content, encoding and access", "description": "What a American literature says, how it is encoded and who may read it.", "rationale": "An informational thing carries content that can be copied, versioned and withheld, none of which its physical carrier explains.", "layers": [ { "id": "content-and-encoding", "name": "Content and encoding", "description": "The content itself, its format and its language.", "findings": [ { "id": "content-and-format", "name": "Content, format and language", "description": "What a American literature contains and in what form it is held.", "questions": [ { "id": "content-and-format-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the content of a American literature, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "content-and-format-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the content of a American literature, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "content-and-format-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the content of a American literature is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "access-and-rights", "name": "Access, rights and retention", "description": "Who may read, copy or change it, and for how long it is kept.", "findings": [ { "id": "access-rules", "name": "Access rules and retention", "description": "The permissions attached to a American literature and the period it survives.", "questions": [ { "id": "access-rules-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes access to a American literature, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "access-rules-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about access to a American literature, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "access-rules-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once access to a American literature is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "work-and-manifestation", "name": "Work, version and copy", "description": "Which level of American literature a statement is about.", "rationale": "The work, the edition, the file and the copy in hand are four things; rights and content attach to different ones.", "layers": [ { "id": "levels", "name": "Levels of the thing", "description": "Work, expression, manifestation and item, in plain terms.", "findings": [ { "id": "level-rules", "name": "What belongs at each level", "description": "Which facts hold for the work and which only for one copy.", "questions": [ { "id": "level-rules-q01", "text": "For American literature, which facts belong to the work itself, which to a version, and which to a single copy?", "kind": "boundary" }, { "id": "level-rules-q02", "text": "What identifier exists at each level, and which one is being cited?", "kind": "definition" } ] } ] }, { "id": "versions", "name": "Versions, editions and variants", "description": "How versions differ and which is canonical to whom.", "findings": [ { "id": "version-record", "name": "Versions and canonicity", "description": "Differences that matter and who calls one authoritative.", "questions": [ { "id": "version-record-q01", "text": "Which versions or editions of American literature exist, and how do they differ substantively?", "kind": "definition" }, { "id": "version-record-q02", "text": "Who treats which version as authoritative, and for what purpose?", "kind": "provenance" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "authorship-and-rights", "name": "Authorship, rights and permitted use", "description": "Who made American literature and what may be done with it.", "rationale": "Rights are jurisdictional, time-limited and attached to a level, and an agent that ignores that will copy what it may not.", "layers": [ { "id": "authorship", "name": "Authorship and contribution", "description": "Who contributed what, and in what capacity.", "findings": [ { "id": "contribution-record", "name": "Contributors and roles", "description": "The people and bodies behind it, with their roles.", "questions": [ { "id": "contribution-record-q01", "text": "Who authored or contributed to American literature, in what roles, and how is that attested?", "kind": "provenance" }, { "id": "contribution-record-q02", "text": "Where authorship is disputed or anonymous, what is recorded instead?", "kind": "boundary" } ] } ] }, { "id": "rights", "name": "Rights and permissions", "description": "Which rights subsist, where, until when, and what they permit.", "findings": [ { "id": "rights-record", "name": "Rights, term and permitted acts", "description": "The regime in force and what it allows.", "questions": [ { "id": "rights-record-q01", "text": "What rights subsist in American literature, in which jurisdictions, and until when?", "kind": "definition" }, { "id": "rights-record-q02", "text": "Which acts are permitted without further permission, and which must an agent refuse?", "kind": "action" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "provenance-and-evidence", "name": "Provenance, evidence and time", "description": "Where every claim about a American literature came from and when it held.", "rationale": "A claim without a source and a time cannot be superseded, only overwritten, and an agent that overwrites loses the ability to explain itself.", "layers": [ { "id": "source-and-authority", "name": "Source and authority", "description": "Who said it, on what evidence, and how strongly.", "findings": [ { "id": "claim-provenance", "name": "Claim provenance and confidence", "description": "The authority behind each claim about a American literature and how confident it is.", "questions": [ { "id": "claim-provenance-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes a claim about a American literature, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "claim-provenance-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about a claim about a American literature, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "claim-provenance-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once a claim about a American literature is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "time-and-versions", "name": "Time, versions and supersession", "description": "When a claim was true, when it was learnt, and what replaced it.", "findings": [ { "id": "validity-and-supersession", "name": "Validity period and supersession", "description": "How an old claim about a American literature is retired without being erased.", "questions": [ { "id": "validity-and-supersession-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the validity of a claim about a American literature, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "validity-and-supersession-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the validity of a claim about a American literature, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "validity-and-supersession-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the validity of a claim about a American literature is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] } ] } ] }, "statistics": { "bundles": 6, "layers": 12, "findings": 14, "questions": 38 } } } }