[Commlist] Online Symposium Literary AI: Computational Writing and the Media of Language

We warmly invite you to attend Literary AI: Computational Writing and 
the Media of Language, an online symposium hosted by the School of Arts 
and Social Sciences, Monash University Malaysia.

Dates: 6-8 July 2026
Time: 20:00-22:15 Kuala Lumpur (13:00–15:15 London | 14:00–16:15 
Zurich/Aarhus | 08:00–10:15 New York)
Format: Online via Zoom | Free and open to all
Website: https://literaryai.org <https://literaryai.org>

Recent advances in large language models have intensified a fundamental 
question: what happens to language when writing is operationalised in 
computation? Rather than treating AI as a tool that imitates human 
expression, this symposium begins from the premise that computational 
writing transforms the very media conditions under which language is 
produced, circulated, and read.

Large language models operate through segmentation, probabilistic 
prediction, and structural recombination, not through semantic 
understanding or communicative intention. Computational writing thus 
marks a shift from language as expression to language as process: 
structured, iterable, and increasingly infrastructural. This shift 
alters not only the literary elements we know, such as writing, reading, 
form, text, authorship, but the conditions that make language legible 
and operative in the first place.

Literary AI is a symposium that takes this transformation seriously. It 
brings together leading international scholars to investigate how 
computational writing reshapes literary conditions, and how literary 
theory and practice in turn open new ways of understanding AI, language, 
and media. Its guiding question is: What happens to writing, reading, 
text and meaning when language becomes operationalised through computation?

Designed as a focused forum for sustained intellectual exchange, the 
symposium pairs scholars across three dedicated panels:

Panel 1 — Inscribing Meaning (6 July)
Investigating the future of writing after logocentrism and the 
ontological status of language in machine learning.
David J. Gunkel (Northern Illinois University) & John Cayley (Brown 
University)

Panel 2 — Reading Interfaces (7 July)
Examining the anticipatory logic of chatbot interfaces and the urgent 
relationship between critique and formal methods in AI.
Søren Bro Pold (Aarhus University) & Ben Grosser (University of 
Illinois), joint presentation; Juan Luis Gastaldi (ETH Zurich)

Panel 3 — Conditioning Text (8 July)
Dissecting the role of artifice in human cognition and authorship 
alongside the emerging political economy of automated textual production.
Dennis Yi Tenen (Columbia University) & Matthew Kirschenbaum (University 
of Virginia)

The symposium closes with a roundtable bringing all speakers into 
conversation.

Together, these sessions position Literary AI as an urgent critical 
field: one concerned with how literary practices and computational 
infrastructures co-constitute one another within contemporary media 
environments.

The symposium is free to attend and open to all. We warmly welcome 
researchers, practitioners, students, and anyone with a curiosity about 
language, writing, and AI.

Register here 
<https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/literary-ai-computational-writing-and-the-media-of-language-tickets-1986430488063?aff=oddtdtcreator>. 
For enquiries, please email: (literaryai2026 /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(literaryai2026 /at/ gmail.com)>.

The full programme, including abstracts and speaker biographies is 
available at https://literaryai.org <https://literaryai.org>.

---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely. The commlist has no responsibility for any damage caused by its postings. Subscription to the list automatically implies agreement with this rule.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------