The Humanities in the AI Future
PLEASE NOTE: The location for the Friday symposium has been changed to Busch Hall, Room 18 (basement level).
This symposium will convene four diverse talks on the affordances of humanistic scholarship with and about artificial intelligence and machine learning. Drawing on work ranging from literature and women’s and gender studies to history of science and science and technology studies, our speakers will model a series of humanistic approaches to understanding and using these culturally seismic technologies.
Programming will kick off on Thursday afternoon, April 4 with an informal session on teaching with and on AI in humanities courses, to which all members of the campus community are welcome, and flow into a single stream of talks on Friday, April 5. We will also host a lunch session on Friday for graduate students and postdocs (separate registration) to be able to confer directly with invited scholars on developing humanistic projects and methods with artificial intelligence.
More details on the events (including presentation abstracts) can be found on the main page: The Humanities in the AI Future.
4 pm, Thursday, April 4: Pedagogy Lightning Round
Duncker Hall, Hurst Lounge (Room 201)
This session will convene humanities instructors — both visiting and from WashU — on teaching with and about artificial intelligence tools and methods in the humanities. Those participating in the conversation will give informal, five-minute lightning talks intended to share ideas and resources with other instructors on the exciting possibilities of AI in humanities syllabi, beyond the policies prohibiting its use in writing assignments.
9 am–5 pm, Friday, April 5: Symposium
LOCATION CHANGE: Busch Hall, Room 18
9:45 am: Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal
Ruth and Paul Idzik Collegiate Assistant Professor of Digital Scholarship and English, University of Notre Dame
“Transformations and Textual Imag-inations”
11 am: Rita Raley
Professor, Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
“New from Template: ‘Creativity in the Age of AI’”
1:30 pm: Mitali Thakor
Assistant Professor of Science in Society
Wesleyan University
“Machine Desires: Generative AI, Digital Extractivism, and Feminist Politics of Care”
2:45 pm: Melissa Villa-Nicholas
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Studies
University of Rhode Island
“Silicon Valley and Storytelling in Building AI for Citizenship Surveillance”