AI, the Algorithmic Subject, and Intention: The Future of Writing Pedagogy
This panel aims to provide a forum where instructors, theorists, and scholars grappling and experimenting with AI can engage with each other and discuss how existing approaches to AI and instruction make the transition from theory to practice, whether they adequately address the nature of AI, and whether new frameworks of interpretation may render the complexities of implementing machine-generated text more accurately. The strength of the panel lies in the way it brings into dialogue the distinct modes of theory, pedagogy, and individual experience.
Artificial intelligence brings the connection (or lack of connection) between meaning and intention into relief. Recent debates surrounding AI often cite Daniel Dennett’s “intentional stance,” noting that the meaning generated by large language models (LLMs) lacks the intention traditionally attributed to the author of a text. Indeed, Roland Barthes’s “death of the author” may now be read not as a rhetorical or metaphorical expression but rather as a more accurate description of the uncanny dead, or rather undead, hand composing an AI-generated text. One of the implications of these debates is that the hermeneutical frameworks we take for granted may be inadequate, raising the question: where does meaning reside? In an attempt to recover meaning from, as Emily Bender calls it, the “stochastic parrot” of AI, we offer a panel that approaches the problem through multiple modes of inquiry.
Our first presenter, Darren Borg, will begin by addressing some of the complexities of AI-generated text through the lens of hermeneutic theory. AI presents a unique problem for hermeneutics, which historically has relied on the idea, in Hans Georg Gadamer’s words, of a “fusion of horizons” between author and reader; yet LLMs generate text based on algorithms and patterns in language, not on intention. The question “Where does meaning reside?” becomes of the utmost political and philosophical significance if meaning is relegated to the undead hand of the machine. Accordingly, this paper will argue for a revision of hermeneutic theory that takes the pattern-based text-generation of LLMs into account.
Our second presenter, Christene d’Anca, will move from theory to practice by arguing for a meaningful solution to the pedagogical impasse writing instructors often face when contending with the appropriate use of AI and showcasing a scaffolded copyediting assignment that positions AI-generated text as an object of critical rhetorical analysis and human revision. While this assignment was designed for an upper division Multimedia Writing course, it is broadly applicable across disciplines and writing levels. The assignment asks students to generate a short piece of web content using an AI tool and then systematically evaluate and revise that text using established principles of effective web writing. Drawing on process-based pedagogy and professional editing practices, this assignment makes visible the often-invisible labor of revision while reinforcing students’ authority as writers and editors. Rather than treating AI as a threat to authorship, the assignment reframes it as a flawed collaborator whose limitations sharpen students’ rhetorical judgment. Student reflections reveal increased confidence in identifying tone, purpose, and audience, as well as a growing skepticism toward surface-level fluency.
We then turn to an account of personal experience surrounding the advent of AI in academia from our final presenter, Melissa Meade, who will discuss AI from an interdisciplinary administrative perspective. Drawing from cross-disciplinary humanistic concepts in psychoanalysis and cultural theory she will address some of the impacts of AI and new communication technologies on cultures of teaching and learning. She will share her experiences leading a college-wide AI taskforce and working with English faculty on their trepidation, excitement, and grief about AI in the writing classroom. In each instance she looks to concepts such as the uncanny, techno-transference, desire, Other, and fantasy to ask what is changed in our work together as academics in the age of AI. Bridging faculty and administrative perspectives, she will also consider the use of AI in administrative work such as tenure evaluation, asking what role our humanistic methods play in our labor and institutional lives.
In offering these presentations, we hope to advance the discussion about machine-generated text and invite the audience to consider how the complexities that we consider here might be further studied. More specifically, we hope to draw attention to the inadequacies of traditional interpretive frameworks, pedagogical strategies, and implementation practices in the spirit of making obstacles into opportunities.