The Intelligence of Reading

Catalog description

Contemporary debates about artificial intelligence are taking place in every conceivable social and cultural space. Such discussions often congeal into standoffs between utopian celebration and deflationary dismissiveness; apocalyptic fears reread utopia as disaster, while skeptics insist AI is “neither artificial nor intelligent.” We will begin with the history of the concept of intelligence and related terms ("emotional" intelligence), then consider symptomatic accounts of AI in the genres of utopia, dystopia, and don't-believe-the-hype. After this prelude, we will read texts in the theory and practice of reading, ranging from new criticism and reader-response to reparative, close, “close but not deep,” symptomatic, with/against the grain, and surface readings. We will ask how these competing theories think the forms of "intelligence" they exemplify, bring to bear, or attempt to cultivate -- or if they propose another rubric for the insights reading generates.