Selected Talks, Workshops & Conferences

• “Collective Intelligence,” lecture by invitation to the Ethics Seminar, Department of Philosophy at St. Joseph’s University on April 15, 2025.
• “The Lifecycle of Synthetic Objects,” Keynote address at the Sandbjerg Seminar: Methods and Materials, Graduate School of the Arts at Aarhus University on March 26, 2025.
• “Early Story Generators,” Keynote address at the Chungbuk National University on October 12, 2024.
• “Manufacturing Creativity,” lecture by invitation to Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST), Daejeon on October 10, 2024.
• “Story Machines,” lecture by invitation to the narrative research group (Situation Lecture Series) on September 27th, 2024 at Concordia University.
• “Author Function,” lecture by invitation from the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences in Beijing on September 21, 2024.
• “Measuring Text Reuse in Fiction,” lecture by invitation from the Special Advisor to the Provost for AI at Dartmouth College on September 19th, 2024.
• “Literary Theory for Robots,” lecture by invitation from the Program for Media and Modernity, Princeton University on February 16th, 2024.
• “Literary Modeling and Visualization,” keynote address at the 2023 Wenshan International Conference, National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan on November 18, 2023. Program. Slides.
• “What is Machine Literature?” Lecture by invitation to the 2023 World Humanities Forum in Busan, Korea, November 9th 2023. Poster 1.
• “Seriously Entertaining: Literary Theory for Robots,” literary cabaret as part of W. W. Norton’s 100th anniversary and the launch of Norton Shorts, a new series of short books by leading scholars. Public Theater, New York, November 7th 2023. Poster 1, 2, 3. Sketch by Joan Chiverton.
• “Digital Philology.” Lecture by invitation to Tsinghua University, Beijing October 25th, 2023. Slides.
• “The Anatomy of Vaccine Hesitancy.” Computational Formalism Workshop at the Neukom Institute, Dartmouth, Spring 2023.
• “Literary Theory for Robots.” 2023 Renato Poggioli Lecture at the Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University on April 20th, 2023.
• “Literature in the Age of AI.” Lecture by invitation at the American University of Central Asia, Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), March 16, 2023.
• “AI in Humanities Education.” Faculty-student round table at AUCA Technical School of Innovation, Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), March 15, 2023.
• “Computational Philology.” Lecture by invitation to Bishkek State University (Kyrgyzstan), March 15, 2023.
• “Filing Technique in the Manufacture of Realism.” Talk by invitation to a conference on Office Supplies: The Material History of Writing, at the University of Pittsburgh, February 24th, 2023.
• “Chat Bots Among Us.” Roundatble by invitation to Coding and the New Human Phenotype, at the Helix Center, New York Psychoanalytic Society on October 16, 2022.
• “Algorithmic Imagination and Literary Study.” Keynote address as part NRF Korea Artificial Intelligence avec Digital Humanities Symposium at the Transmedia World Literature Institute, Dongguk University on September 24th, 2022.
• “The Folklore of Vaccine Resistance.” Talk and discussion by invitation at the Center for American Literary Studies, Penn State as part of “The Role of the Humanities in Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy” panel in the Unprecedented Webinar Series on January 21, 2022.
• “Media and Metaphor (Or How Literary Theory Figures in the Study of Human Computer Interaction).” Talk by invitation at Princeton University, Department of Comparative Literature, Virtually So, Virtually Here lecture series on September 23, 2021.
• “The Rise of Literary Machines.” Keynote lecture by invitation to The Korean Society of East West Comparative Literature, Third International Conference on “Digital Humanities and World Literature” at Pohang University, Korea on October 26, 2019.
• “The Morphology of Formalism.” Talk by invitation at the Prehistory of Computational Analysis Workshop, Center for Humanities and Information, Penn State on August 22–25.
• “The Hermeneutics of Computer-generated Text.” Talk by invitation at the “Poetic Critique” conference, Indiana University Global, Berlin on June 27 – 29, 2019.
• “Minimal Computing in Plain Text.” Keynote lecture by invitation to the Computer-Assisted Text Analysis for Resource-Scarce Literatures conference at the University of Miami on April 25, 2019.
• “Technology and Literary Studies.” Seminar by invitation to the Rifkind Center for Humanities and the Arts at the City College of New York on March 14, 2019.
• “Authoring Artificial Intelligence: Chatbots and Story Generators of the 1950–1970s.” Lecture by invitation at the Human Futures Research Program, Aarhus University, Denmark on January 17, 2019.
• “Distributed Agency in the Novel.” Lecture by invitation at the Institute of Communication and Culture, Aaarhus University, Denmark on January 9, 2019.
• “Experimental Humanities.” Talk by invitation at the Global Emergent Media Lab at Concordia University on November 21, 2018.
• “Techniques of Industrial Modernism: Plot Genie / Plot Robot.” Lecture by invitation at the Puzzles, Bots, and Poetics symposium hosted by the Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures, University of Virginia on October 27, 2018.
• “Platform Reading.” Lecture and workshop by invitation to Digital Theory Lab at New York University on October 23, 2018.
• “Character and Agency in Arthur Hailey’s Airport.” Talk by invitation at the Harvard NHC Novel Theory seminar on April 2, 2018.
• “Computational Archaeology of Fictional Space.” Lecture by invitation at Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities and Center for Literary & Comparative Studies, Maryland University on March 29, 2018.
• “Phenomenological Models of Time in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.” Workshop by invitation to Aarhus University on March 23, 2018.
• Principal convener of “Architectures of Knowledge: Lahore” conference. “Archives Anonymous, Massively Collaborative, Trans-human,” lecture. Information Technology Institute, Pakistan on March 14-15, 2018.
• “American Formalism and the Automation of Intellectual Labor.” Lecture by invitation at the Becoming Media conference, UCLA on February 23, 2018.
• “Literary Modeling and Visualization.” Lecture by invitation to the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University (Denmark) on January 5, 2018.
• “Experimental Criticism: The Creative Limits of Artificial Intelligence.” Talk by invitation to the Center for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University (Germany) on December 20, 2017.
• “Infrastructural Reading: Content, Medium, Context, History.” Lecture by invitation to the Internet Cultures Symposium at Yale on December 2, 2017.
• “Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation.” Book launch and talk by invitation at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University on November 28, 2017.
• “What is Enlightenment? Kant, Arendt, and the Relevance of Columbia’s Core Today.” Lecture at at the Core to Commencement Campaign event in Chicago on November 6, 2017.
• “Computational Approaches to Characterizing Fictional Space.” Lecture by invitation at the Theory and Media Studies Colloquium, Yale University on October 13, 2017.
• “Sustainable Authorship in Plain Text” and “Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation.” A workshop and lecture by invitation at the Digital Humanities Forum, Kansas University, on September 29, 2017.
• “Modeling Space: Quantitative Parsimony in Computational Literary Analysis.” Lecture by invitation at the Analysing Text conference hosted by the Alan Turing Institute at the British Library, London on September 22, 2017.
• “Version Control for Textual Criticism.” Lecture and workshop by invitation at the What is a Book in the 21st Century? seminar, Columbia University on January 20, 2017.
• “Technologies of Dissent: Shadow Libraries.” Lecture by invitation at the The Black Sea Networks Initiative, Columbia University on January 20, 2017.
• “The Sociology of Book Piracy.” Lecture by invitation at the Digital Humanities Symposium, Yale University Library on November 12, 2016.
• “Experimental Methods in the Humanities.” Lecture by invitation at the Scandinavian Modernism and Digital Resources workshop at Aaarhus University, Denmark on September 14, 2016.
• Principal convener of Architectures of Knowledge: Mumbai conference at the Tata Institute for Social Sciences on July 4-6, 2016.
• “Literature Down to a Pixel.” Conference presentation as part of the Ephemera and Ephemerality: Media, Archive, Memory panel at ACLA (Harvard University) on March 17-19, 2016.
• “Metaphor Machines.” Lecture by invitation at the Digital Poetics Conference, CUNY Graduate Center on February 5, 2016. Presented also at Possibilities: Works-in-Progress seminar, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia on November 14, 2016.
• “Rapid Prototyping of Speculative Thought.” Talk by invitation at Digging Deep: Ecosystems, Institutions and Processes for Critical Making, CUNY Graduate Center on December 1, 2015.
• “Scene Detection in Literary Fiction.” Paper by invitation at the New Digital Resources and Computational Methods for the Study of Literature in a Global Context Conference, UCLA on November 4-5, 2015.
• “Digital Humanities: Core Skills and Foundations.” Workshop by invitation at the Polonsky Foundation Graduate Student Workshops in Digital Humanities, NYU on May 29, 2015.
• “Version Control for Library Use.” Workshop by invitation at Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning on February 5, 2015.
• “The Ethics of Writing in Plain Text,” with Grant Wythoff. Lecture by invitation at the Princeton-Weimar Summer School for Media Studies on June 19, 2014.
• “Rage with the Machine.” Keynote address at the University of Glasgow on May 28, 2014.
• “Technology We Deserve.” Keynote address at the Educational Technology Conference, Columbia University Teachers College on May 18, 2014.
• “Introduction to Cloud Computing with Amazon AWS.” Workshop by invitation at the Digital Praxis Seminar, CUNY on March 14, 2014.
• “Book Piracy as Peer Preservation.” Lecture by invitation at the Connective Media talk series, Cornell Tech (New York, NY) on March 6, 2014. Repeated on March 14, 2014 at a meeting of the Association of American University Presses, hosted by Columbia University Press.
• “Civic Scholarship.” Lecture by invitation at the Research Without Borders conference, Columbia University on February 27, 2014.
• “Visualizing Book Piracy.” Conference address by invitation at Detective: Advanced Data Visualization Project, Graduate School of Architecture, Columbia University on February 3, 2014.
• “Algorithmic Agency.” Lecture by invitation at the Cognitive Theory and the Arts Seminar, Harvard Humanities Center on November 21, 2013.
• “Authoring in Plain Text.” Workshop by invitation at the Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University on November 15, 2013. Repeated at the Comparative Literature Colloquium at Harvard on November 22, 2013.
• “Literary Networks.” Lecture by invitation at the Digitization in the Humanities conference, Rice University on April 6, 2013.
• “Digital Humanities in Context.” Lecture by invitation at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University on February 21, 2013.
• “Interpretive Communities over Time.” Lecture by invitation at the Big Data and Digital Scholarship Seminar, Columbia University on February 11, 2013.
• “Hacking the Archive.” Lecture by invitation at the New Media in Education Conference, Columbia University on February 1, 2013.
• “Digital Humanities at Columbia.” Lecture by invitation at the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship, Department of Computer Science, Columbia University on November 27, 2012.
• “Growth and Decay of Shared Knowledge.” Lecture at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University on April 3, 2012.
• “Reflections on the ‘Laboratory’ Paradigm in the Humanities.” Lecture at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University on December 13, 2011.
• “Nothing is at Stake, Everything is at Stake: Literary Studies Today.” Talk by invitation at the Graduate Professional Development Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University on October 26, 2011.
• “Experimental Criticism: Is Knowledge Aggregation in the Humanities Possible?” Conference presentation at ACL(x), Data Mining Panel, Penn State University on October 1, 2011.
• “The Premise of Machine Literature.” Lectures by invitation at the University of Iowa, Loyola University, University of Rochester on multiple dates in 2011.
• “Recursive Encounters with Ourselves.” Lecture by invitation at the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University on January 26, 2011.
• “The Tyranny of Literature.” Lecture by invitation at the Thinking with Technology Workshop, Harvard Humanities Center on November 15, 2010.
• “Order on Display: The Aesthetics of Soviet Data Visualization.” Paper presentation at the AAASS Conference in Boston, MA on November 12, 2009.
• “The Birth of Non-Fiction.” Lecture at the Slavic Languages and Literatures Colloquium, Harvard University in October, 2006.