Date and Location: April 16-17, 2025 at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois
Abstracts: 150 word abstracts are due November 1, 2024.
Send to Dr. Katherine Ellison at keellis@ilstu.edu
Generative artificial intelligence, large language processing models, advanced analytics, reinforced and unsupervised machine learning, predictive prose. Humanist scholars and educators outside of computer science, mathematics, engineering, and cognitive science are now versed in the terminology of AI, but conversations about the potential epistemological, ethical, existential, and pedagogical impact of technologies of human behavior simulation are still young. This symposium will invite us to address big picture questions like:
- How will AI change or not change the nature of humanist research?
- How will AI affect the production and reception of creative works (poetry, craft, visual arts, film, music, literature, etc.)?
- How will we theorize – and how have we already theorized — the concept of artificial intelligence using the frameworks of our fields, with attention to personhood and culture, to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality?
- What is the role of the humanities as tech sectors move full steam forward with innovation, often using our own research without our consent?
- What are the ethical and legal stakes of AI?
- How do those of us invested in independent critical thinking, expressive writing, close reading, and original analysis teach those abilities if students can type in a prompt and receive a paper in seconds?
- What is the impact on our humanity?
The Illinois State University AI and the Humanities Symposium is a unique opportunity to foster discussion among scholars, teachers, and students from around the world and across disciplines of the humanities, arts, and connected social sciences. We welcome proposals from technical writers and philosophers, literary critics and economists, language scholars and anthropologists, publishers and linguists, creative writers and sociologists, historians and artists, higher education faculty and primary and secondary educators, and any other related discipline or interdisciplinary field.
What Are We Looking For?
- Formal and informal panel proposals
- Individual paper proposals
- Roundtable proposals (with a group formed or not yet formed)
- Informational sessions
- Demonstrations
- Interactive activities
- Creativity and experimentation!
Please submit a 150-word abstract to Dr. Katherine Ellison at keellis@ilstu.edu by November 1, 2024.
Hosted by the Departments of English, Philosophy, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, the School of Communication, and the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Illinois State University.
Funding generously provided by the ISU Provost Innovation and Enhancement Grant (PIE).