science and culture

In July 2023, a tech startup called “Simulation Inc” released an AI technology that the company claims will make it possible to generate entire t.v. episodes—including dialogue, voice acting, animation, and editing—from nothing more than a two-sentence prompt. Somewhat oddly—and provoking suspicion that the project might be a hoax or internet prank—Simulation Inc’s website lists a fake address under their contact info: 500 Baudrillard Drive, San Francisco, CA. 

The 4th POM ConferenceRWTH Aachen University
KäteHamburger Kolleg:

ASLE 2024 Symposium "Green Fire: Energy Stories Beyond Extraction"University of North Florida
May 16-19, 2024

Call for Individual and Pre-formed Panel Proposals

Call for Online Book Chapters

Title: Transcultural Media Narratives: Mapping the Cross-Cultural Communication Landscape

Abstract Submission Deadline: 30 November 2023

Editors: Prof. Eduardo CAMILO & Prof. Karima BOUZIANE

Publisher and copyright: LABCOM, Comunicação e Artes,

Universidade da Beira Interior,

Rua Marquês D’Ávila e Bolama,

6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal.

Rationale

The realm of science fiction serves as a captivating tapestry, weaving together speculative narratives that extend beyond the bounds of conventional reality. Within this expansive genre, three thematic strands emerge as critical foci: Posthumanism, Alternate Realities, and Cyberculture. This exploration aims to unravel the nuanced layers embedded within these themes, offering a critical lens through which to examine the implications for contemporary society, ethical considerations, and the trajectory of human existence.

After Shock: New Perspectives in Literary Studies and Linguistics (Rome, 10th and 11th June 2024)

Sapienza-Silesia Graduate Forum 2024 (37th Cycle of the PhD Programme in Studies in English Literatures, Language and Translation)

Call for Papers

In 1950, the pioneering mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing asked the world: “Can machines think?”

Published in his article in Mind when he was 38 years old, Turing’s question emerged from a life of relentless imagination. By then, Turing had applied his brilliance to help the allies win World War II and revolutionized computing—creating the foundation for much later developments in AI technologies and machine learning. His intrepidness included living as a gay man in a society that would criminalize and cause him irreparable harm for it.

Contemporary novels are marbled with representations of digital media. Despite the notable attention to digital technologies already present in post-war literature, the twenty-first century has witnessed the unprecedented integration of digital media into everyday lives, where digital objects and systems are shaping social and cultural paradigms anew. Contemporary writers, in and through their writing, actively engage with the digital media experience of the twenty-first century.

Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence  (2001) was not a blockbuster in the sense of Jaws, E.T or Jurassic Park (the other films covered in this book series) – it did however make a heavy return on its near $100 million budget and received critical praise in the media. The film is the product of several authors: science fiction writer Brian Aldiss on whose short story ‘Supertoys Last All Summer Long’ (1969) the film was based; Stanley Kubrick, whose project it had been initially before passing it over to Spielberg in the wake of Jurassic park, Spielberg made and released the film two years after Kubrick’s death.

We recently launched a blog series on medical and health humanities with an emphasis on the Global South. The blog series aims to bring together the multitude of discussions and expressive models of health and illness in order to explore interdisciplinary encounters and contestations related to agency, discourse, and power structures. We seek critical engagements within the framework of medical humanities for a more inclusive conception of health care and well-being that opens up a space for personal accounts of medicalized subjects on the margins of the medical establishment. The series emphasizes that embodiedness of health and illness belongs to the realm of narrativity both as personal experience and as part of medical epistemology.

 CALL FOR PAPERS 

Embodied Histories: Cultural History of, in, and through the Human Body 

September 4-6, 2024, Potsdam, Germany (on site) 

Call for Papers for volume 16, n° 1(33)/ 2024: Digital Methods and Fields: Feminist Perspectives

Guest editors:

Audrey BANEYX, Research Engineer, Médialab, Sciences Po, France, audrey.baneyx@sciencespo.fr 

Hélène BOURDELOIE, Associate professor, CIS (CNRS) & LabSIC, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, France, Helene.Bourdeloie@univ-Paris13.fr 

Mélanie LALLET, Associate professor, UCO Nantes, Arènes, CHUS & Irméccen, France, melanie.lallet@yahoo.fr

Multiple award-winning author Ann Leckie is extremely well-regarded in speculative fiction, but relatively understudied in academia. With a new book out in June 2023 that expands the world of the Imperial Radch trilogy, it is an exciting time to be an Ann Leckie scholar. This session invites essays that address her work broadly.

“This shabby piece of equipment”: Modernism and Artificial Intelligence

Session sponsored by the International Lawrence Durrell Society

Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900

The International Lawrence Durrell Society requests proposals for 20-minute presentations on artificial intelligence in the modernist era. Potential subjects include: