N. Katherine Hayles's keynote lecture “Collaborating with an Alien: Large Language Model as Writer, Critic, Reader” will take place within the framework of the “BrAIve New Worlds?! Literature in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Concepts, Genres, Model Interpretations” conference on June 20, 2025, from 10:00-11:30 in HS 11.01 (Heinrichstraße 36).
How do machines read, write, and mean? As Large Language Models reshape the landscape of literary studies, N. Katherine Hayles' keynote will explore the emerging collaborations between humans and machines—as co-authors, critics, and readers. Far from mimicking us, LLMs operate from an alien yet eerily familiar perspective. For more information, the full abstract can be found here.
N. Katherine Hayles is the Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and James B. Duke Professor Emerita from Duke University. Her research focuses on the relations of literature, science and technology in the 20th and 21st centuries. Her twelve print books include Postprint: Books and Becoming Computational (Columbia, 2021), Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2017) and How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis (Univ. of Chicago Press 2015), in addition to over 100 peer-reviewed articles. Her books have won several prizes, including The Rene Wellek Award for the Best Book in Literary Theory for How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Literature, Cybernetics and Informatics, and the Suzanne Langer Award for Writing Machines. She has been recognized by many fellowships and awards, including two NEH Fellowships, a Guggenheim, a Rockefellar Residential Fellowship at Bellagio, and two University of California Presidential Research Fellowships. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her latest book, Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with our Nonhuman Symbionts, was published in February 2025 by the University of Chicago Press.
Join us on June 20, 2025, to hear this renowned researcher examine the machine’s “umwelt,” and what it reveals about the future of language, meaning, and literary interpretation in an age of intelligent computation.