Megan Ward, "Seeming Human: Artificial Intelligence and Victorian Realist Character" (OSU Press, 2018)

Summary

Artificial intelligence and Victorian literature: these two notions seem incompatible. AI brings us to the age of information and technology, whereas Victorian literature invites us to the world of lengthy novels, to the world of the written word. In spite of seeming incongruity the AI and Victorian literature evoke, the two notions do establish a contact zone: the mind. AI and characters created by Victorian writers are connected by the individual’s attempt and desire to project their imaginative creations into the space outside the mind. In Seeming Human: Artificial Intelligence and Victorian Realist Character (The Ohio State University Press, 2018), Megan Ward takes into consideration the development of technologies and outlines methods for the analysis of Victorian realist characters that can be presented as constructs that establish connections between the mind and technologies. Ward invites her readers to approach novels as information systems generating multiple meanings, which can be re-organized and re-assembled. Seeming Human challenges the chronological presentation of literature and searches for the ways to further develop textual interpretation, surpassing spatial and temporal limitations.

Your Host

Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed

Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. She has a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures (Indiana University, 2022). She also holds a Ph.D. in American literature (Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2007). Her research interests include contested memory, with a focus on Ukraine and Russia. She is a review editor of H-Ukraine. Since 2016, she has been a host on the New Books Network (Ukrainian Studies, East European Studies, and Literary Studies channels).
View Profile