Distinguished Lecture Series 25-26: Reading Group by Prof. Caroline Bassett

Reading Group: Authors, Deadbots, Science Fiction

Speaker: Caroline Bassett, Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Cambridge
April 1, 2026, 4:00PM (Wed)
XR Space, Arts Tech Lab, Room 4.35, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Abstract
I research technical media and cultural change – often in relation to specific forms (literature, visual culture, media arts), but also in relation to theory and method. In this reading group I’ve included some work that looks at different aspects of this. The first reading considers the future of literature in an age of GenAI. The second reading explores the uncanny and the digital afterlife. The third is brief and considers the relationship between fictional and ‘real’ futures. I hope we can use them as a jumping off point to explore some of the themes that interest me, and that might also be areas you are working on. I’ve included an article on scholarly editing if you have time for some background reading.

Reading List - reading materials will be sent upon successful registration

Key reading:

• ‘Contagious Life, Clones, Deadbots, Digital Twins’. Culture Machine. Vol 24. (2025).
• ‘Except in Science Fiction? Why you can get there from here’ in Micheal Shamiyeh (eds), Practices of Futurecasting. De Gruyter Brill: London.

Optional reading:

• ‘The Author, Poor Bastard’ in Lively et al (eds). The Routledge Handbook of AI and Literature. London: Routledge. (2025) 19-26.
• ‘The Construct Editor: Tweaking with Jane, Writing with Ted, Editing with an AI?’. Textual Cultures. May 2022.

Biography

Caroline Bassett is Professor of Digital Humanities, Director of Cambridge Digital Humanities, a member of the Faculty of English and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge. She researches medium technologies and cultural change with a focus on critical theory, gender and technology, and critical methods. Key book length publications include Anti-Computing (MUP, 2022), a cultural history of automation fever, Furious (Pluto, 2020), a co-authored work exploring gender, ambition and future technologies, and The Arc and the Machine (MUP, 2014), which explored narrative and computation. She is widely published in academic and public fora. Current projects focus on AI and writing, critical medium theory, artificial creativity, future collapse, and on the politics and aesthetics of refusal.

If registration quota via Eventbrite is full, please register through the link below.

https://english.hku.hk/event/574/Professor_Caroline_Bassett_-_Public_Lecture_&_Reading_Group

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