Alan Liu

Screenshot of a paragraph from Alan Liu, “Humanities Definitions Research Project: An Experiment with Agentic AI,” 5 October 2025, https://liu.english.ucsb.edu/humanities-definitions-research-project-an-experiment-with-agentic-ai/. The paragraph contains the following text: "Thirdly, Fellou can concentrate on particular sources to mine multiple materials in bursts. For example, Fellou collected 14 separate paraphrases or quotes from Geoffrey Galt Harpham’s essay “Finding Ourselves: The Humanities as a Discipline.” This may or may not be a “feature,” rather than “bug,” depending on the needs of a researcher. But in any case it means that a researcher needs to take care to ask Fellou to scale its searching well beyond the quota of 100 found items that I asked for in my prototype test to ensure that the results are representative of breadth. Fellou could usefully give the human researcher a better sense of how it chooses to collect from sources. For instance, is it looking for relatively short, discrete passages that pass the threshold of a relevancy score?"

Fellou cited 1 article for which I was lead author but collected many items from it, in the same way it collected 14 items from 1 of Geoffrey Harpham's pieces. My post discusses this at one point (see screenshot). Re: international balance, adjusting the prompt could change that, but I haven't tried

Hi, Elisa! Yes, both literals (which would seem to be context-free) & hierarchical or other relationships (requiring context to discern) seem to be problems for some AI use cases.

Screenshots of the Fellou interface while its browser agent is in progress on a research task prompted by the user. (A) and (B) represent windows with multiple browser tabs open to searches. Each tab in these windows shows rapidly changing thumbnails of the websites, articles (including PDFs), and other materials that Fellou is currently searching and analyzing. A panel at the right of each window shows a partial view of the kinds of sources and topics Fellou has planned to search in response to the user’s prompt. (C) is a window showing a periodically refreshed report on progress so far. In this window, the panel at the left shows in separate blocks some of the kinds of sources and topics that Fellou plans to search. The wide panel in the center summarizes results. And the panel at the right shows in blocks the specific sources and key phrases currently being “deep searched.”

My blog post reporting on testing the use of agentic AI (the Fellou.ai browser) to start a research project on gathering definitions of the humanities: “Humanities Definitions Research Project: An Experiment with Agentic AI” (liu.english.ucsb.edu/humanities-d...).

Gave this a closer look today and wow it really benefits from the many hands that touched it. Every point -- every sub-point -- is thoughtfully substantiated by connecting it to multiple discourses in CS and humanities. The rigorous thought at scale, so to speak, is truly impressive.

Peter Lang Verlag - The Humanities Laboratory This book explores the epistemic status and potential of humanities laboratories. It investigates the history of such laboratories, while contributing ...

Thrilled to announce “The Humanities Laboratory: From Design to Archaeology”, which I co-edited with Jacek Małczyński and the late, dearly remembered Dorota Wolska. www.peterlang.com/document/161...

Table of contents of The Humanities Laboratory: From Design to Archaeology: What Goes on in Humanities Laboratories? .............................................................9 Aleksandra Kil-Matlak, Jacek Małczyński, Dorota Wolska Part 1: Humanities Laboratories Chapter 1 The Tricky Case of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale................................................................................................65 Aleksandra Kil-Matlak, Jacek Małczyński, Dorota Wolska Chapter 2 The Laboratory as a “Soap Bubble”: Juri Lotman, the Tartu–Moscow School and the Laboratory of History and Semiotics.............................................87 Jacek Małczyński Chapter 3 Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre: A Laboratory in Search of the Truth................................................................................................... 139 Mirosław Kocur Chapter 4 An Archaeology of Humanities Infrastructure: Paul Otlet and Laboratorium Mundaneum..................................................................................... 175 Aleksandra Kil-Matlak Chapter 5 The Private Banker of Academia: The Case of Aby Warburg’s Laboratory of Cultural-Scientific Picture-History............................................... 213 Karolina Charewicz-Jakubowska 6 Contents Part 2: Laboratorisation of the Humanities Chapter 6 The Laboratory Effect: Laboratories in Leipzig at the Turn of the Twentieth Century................................................................................................... 239 Krzysztof Łukasiewicz Chapter 7 The Laboratorisation of the Field: The Formation of the Anthropological Mode of Knowledge............................................................. 281 Adam Pisarek Chapter 8 Jeremy Bentham and the Formation of the Laboratory of Power-Knowledge.................................................................................................... 317 Rafał Nahirny Part 3: The Post-Humanist Laboratory Chapter 9 T…

Here's the table of contents of The Humanities Laboratory: From Design to Archaeology. I recommend the editors’ introduction, “What Goes on in Humanities Laboratories?” (9-62). It’s truly wonderful: rich, deep, thoughtful.

Screenshot of Peter Lang publisher's web pat for The Humanities Laboratory: From Design to Archaeilogy. The page shows the book cover and a summary of the boojk. The summary reads: "This book explores the epistemic status and potential of humanities laboratories. It investigates the history of such laboratories, while contributing to debates on designing contemporary forms of labs. The book traces the trend for laboratories in the humanities since the mid-nineteenth century, outlining a multitude of projects across diverse times and spaces. We are interested in what makes humanities laboratories different from their scientific relatives. Can a humanities lab and those investigating natural sciences even be considered as related? Or should the relationship between them be seen transversally, outside of the opposition between the humanities and the natural and formal sciences? We argue that the humanities laboratory should not be based on the idea of mimesis and imitate a scientific lab, but rather operate according to the principle of mimicry. Only in this way can the humanities fulfil their self-critical function."

Putting on my infrastructure studies hat to boost this just-published book: The Humanities Laboratory: From Design to Archaeology, edited by Aleksandra Kil-Matlak, Jacek Małczyński, & Dorota Wolska. www.peterlang.com/document/161...

Sandro Botticelli, A Young Man Being Introduced to the Seven Liberal Arts, 1483-1486 (fresco, detached and mounted on canvas). Public domain. The fresco shows the figure of Grammar (one of the seven liberal arts) leading by the hand a “lord” (likely Lorenzo Tornabuoni of a Florentine banker family connected to the ruling House of Medici) into the semi-circle of the other seven liberal arts.

“Liberal Arts Pantocrator” works into my argument short discussions of two early pictorial illustrations (by Herrad of Landsberg & Botticelli ) of the “seven liberal arts.”

Partial screenshot of first page of my "Liberal Arts Pantocrator" essay. The explanation at the top of the page reads: "The following fragment discussing two early pictorial illustrations of the liberal arts was originally part of my article on “Data Science and the Post-Liberal Arts University” (Critical Inquiry 51, no. 4 (2025): 597–618) but had to be cut due to length limitations. The fragment complements the article’s final section on “A Post-Liberal Arts Curriculum (2),” which discusses what is “needed for the post-liberal arts to enhance existing efforts in the liberal arts to be more inclusive of their social margins and global peripheries—in particular, by acknowledging the heritage of applied knowledge embedded in the very notion of such margins and peripheries” (612-618)."

I made a short 3-page essay from part of my “Data Science & the Post-Liberal Arts University” in Critical Inquiry that had to be cut due to length: Liu, Alan. “Liberal Arts Pantocrator.” KCWorks, 24 Sept 2025, doi.org/10.17613/y9e...

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits."

www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

Screenshot of part of Santa Fe Institutute's web page announcing "The New New Science" working group event. The text shown on the page begins as follows (and is followed by the names of the working group organizers: Dan Rockmore, Renana Keydar, and Barak Sober): Thaw Library - Miller Campus Working Group All day September 15, 2025 – September 18, 2025 This working group brings together a small group of scholars with expertise spanning the humanities, mathematics, and computer science. Digital representations of knowledge and artistic corpora have opened new avenues for thinking about traditional Humanities subjects such as literature, linguistics, classics, and history and to rigorously examine mathematical and computational metaphors used in humanistic endeavors, while also exploring how a priori mathematical ideas can find meaning and epistemological value in humanistic subjects now considered natively digital.

Dan Rockmore, an organizer of the Santa Fe Institute working group on "The New New Science," at a whiteboard in the meeting room of the SFI's Miller campus where the group met. Various humanistic and mathematical ideas are scrawled or listed on the board.

Just back from week as member of Santa Fe Institute’s working group on “The New New Science” with a group of mathematicians, computer scientists & (digital) humanists (www.santafe.edu/events/the-n...). Impressed by the quality of the conversations we had on math, humanities, modeling, and much else.

Flyer for the 2026 Texas Tech U. Comparative Literature Sumposium on "Artificial Intelligence and the Futures of the Human" showing a view of the campus at the top and photos of the four keynote speakers at the bottom (Alan Liu, Kalindi Vora, Neda Atanasoski, Bruce Clarke). The flyer's abbreviated version of the symposium's call for papers reads as follow. (The QR code links to the full CFP.) <quote>~~New Generations, New Critical Inspirations~~ In the age of AI, what are the place of the “human” in the humanities and the role of the “humanities” in defining the human? How do we—and how do literature, cinema, and art—reconsider creativity, meaning, and culture in a world where machines can generate and purport to interpret texts, images, and ideas? What new ethical, philosophical, and pedagogical challenges arise when human and machine intelligence intersect? And how does the need to reconceive the humanities in the face of the rise of AI clarify, challenge, or transform our understanding of what it means to be human? This symposium brings together scholars, educators, artists, and technologists to reflect critically on the futures of humanistic inquiry and the futures of the human in the age of AI. We invite contributions that explore the opportunities and challenges AI presents for literature, history, philosophy, art, languages, and cultural studies. Please send your (1) 100-word abstract, (2) 50-word bio-info, and (3) questions to Dr. Y. Shu at eng.complit@ttu.edu by December 1, 2025 </quote>

CFP & flyer for 2026 Texas Tech U symposium on “AI & the Futures of the Human” where I will be a keynoter www.depts.ttu.edu/english/prog.... “How does the need to reconceive the humanities in the face of the rise of AI clarify, challenge, or transform our understanding of what it means to be human?”

That’s right. That was cutting-edge new tech at the time!

I once put many of these materials online on a site called “British Newspaper Coverage of the French Revolution” (Internet Archive copy of site: web.archive.org/web/20130704...).

I found these while discarding boxes of old research notes and photocopies from the 1980s. In the digital age, it’s hard to believe how much labor of the basest kind was needed to harvest from archives, microfilm, etc.

Scattered mass of phototopy pages (some with yellow Post-It notes, lying on a concrete surface. These are copies of pages from British newspapers & magazines covering the French Revolution (including London Times, Morning Chronicle, Morning Post, and Annual Register) that I harvested in the 1980s by printing page-parts from microfilm to a photocopier and then taping them together. I gathered these materials for my first monograph, Wordsworth: The Sense of History.

How research used to be! Pages from British newspapers during the French Revolution I once laboriously gathered from microfilm for my Wordsworth book by printing page parts to a photocopier & taping them together.

CM Vol 25 CfP University as Infrastructure Culture Machine Vol. 25 Call for Papers: University as Infrastructure  Guest-edited by: Alexandra Anikina, Johannes Bruder, Megen de Bruin-Molé, Stephen Cornford, Kwame Phillips & Geoff Cox  …

This looks like a really interesting CFP: University as Infrastructure. culturemachine.net/vol25-cfp-un...

I've admired Tim Sherratt's work for 2 of the 3 decades he mentions (didn't know about his work previously). This was inspiring & direction-setting exploration in the areas of digital humanities, digital archives, algorithmic experimentation, & cultural criticsm. Glad I had chance to meet Tim once.

Screenshot of my email responding to my campus's Humanities & Fine Arts communications director asking for a response to being named Faculty Research Lecturer. The text of the response begins: ~~~~~~~~~~ Dear [communications director], here is some language about receiving the Research Faculty Lecturer award. This is too much for your purpose, I realize. Perhaps you can extract something from this? It’s a distinct honor to be recognized by my colleagues as the annual Faculty Research Lecturer for 2024-25, especially when I look back on the history of the award and realize what company I stand in. Just reviewing who the past Faculty Research Lecturers were from my own English Department makes me humble.† They include some of the most illustrious scholars in literary studies and — most moving to me and others — recently some of the dearest in the hearts of their colleagues for nurturing students and younger colleagues. Being recognized for research is especially meaningful to me now, given the direction my work has taken toward addressing the erosion in the public status of research expertise. My own research continues apace. Recently, I’ve focused on how data science, machine learning, and AI extend, but alter, the knowledges and practices that are foundational for a liberal arts education, which in the American educational system spans the sciences, social sciences, and humanities and arts.†† But my own research aside, the reason I say that recognition for research is so meaningful now is that the public perception of the value of research expertise has perhaps never been more challenged than today. That’s why, as I come to the end of my career, I’ve thrown myself into co-founding a new national organization called the Center for Humanities Communication....

The Academic Senate of UC Santa Barbara recognized me as its 2024-25 Faculty Research Lecturer, “the highest honor the UC Santa Barbara faculty can bestow on one of its members.” I was asked for language in response. This came pouring out of me: liu.english.ucsb.edu/alans-respon...

Why the Humanities Matter -- A Story About Borders A story and statement about the importance of the humanities in today's world by Alan Liu, an English professor who started out a chemistry major. Video created…

My personal 5-min. video: vimeo.com/84252711 on why humanities matter. I can’t improve on the message. But my passion now is the Center for Humanities Communication, which I cofounded to assist the humanities in methods, resources, tools for telling its _why_, center-humanities-communication.org

“Don’t let an easy, commonsensical option erase a unique and potentially more interesting and challenging statement.”

Watson on what LLMs are not: “A key principle for 17th-century [transcribers & translators was] “lectio difficilior potior: The reading that is stranger is stronger. If a word differs between two versions of the text ... , you should actually choose the one that seems to make less sense.”

We’re Finding Out More About What Using A.I. for Writing Does to Your Thinking. The Timing Couldn’t Be Worse. Writers, teachers, and anti-fascists can tell you: Originality is the point.

A very smart, interesting piece on large language model prose from the perspective of a distinguished Shakespeare scholar: Robert N. Watson, “The Odd Over the Obvious.” Slate, June 26, 2025. slate.com/life/2025/06....

Screenshot of the abstract for Liu, Alan. “Data Science and the Post-Liberal Arts University.” Critical Inquiry 51, no. 4 (2025): 597–618. (Also shown is an image of the cover of this issue of the journal, which is a clever media-archaeology style mock-up of an antique library card catalog with six drawers each labeled with the author and title of one of the articles in the journal issue.) The abstract for Alan Liu's article reads: "Data science has grown explosively in higher education, offering undergraduate degrees in the US on a “core and domains” curricular model that overlaps with—and in an intriguing way—replicates the multidisciplinary model of liberal arts education. This essay treats data science as a pathfinder for the continuing evolution of American higher education from the liberal arts to a post-liberal arts centered on applied knowledge, including today’s new modes of predictive/generative knowledge. The essay builds toward a consideration of how the post-liberal arts university can teach students both to apply knowledge and to know the meaning (historical, intellectual, and social) of application. A key for the post-liberal arts university will be to teach preprofessionalism in ways that do not just acknowledge the historical exclusion of the people of applied knowledge (at the social margins and global peripheries) from liberal arts education for the “free man” but turns such acknowledgement into new forms of liberal arts knowledge. Data science, the essay concludes, has the potential to contribute novel ways of conceptualizing intersectionality in general and in relation to applied knowledge. But data science is also constrained in this regard on the global scene where data power belongs to many regions and actors without a shared tradition of liberal arts education and thus a framework for a post-liberal arts carrying on shared ideas and practices of freedom."

My “Data Science and the Post-Liberal Arts University” is just out in Critical Inquiry, www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/.... Thanks to the CI editors for acute feedback pushing me to enrichen the argument of this essay significantly.

“In the absence of a worldwide liberal arts, how can data science collaborate internationally, and with other disciplines, to help the post-liberal arts move toward a telos in common called _freedom_?” (618)

“Below are two planning portfolios” for “A Post Liberal Arts Curriculum (1)” and “A Post Liberal Arts Curriculum (2)” (609-618)

“Let me here make a different move [than critique].... let me try the thought experiment of drawing up designs for tomorrow’s post-liberal arts university that can incorporate today’s rationale of applied knowledge ... as a redirection yet also reaffirmation of the values of the liberal arts” (609)

The liberal arts “have in fact metamorphosed into what data science epitomizes: a post-liberal arts anchored practically and intellectually on an evolving paradigm of applied knowledge” (608)

In the liberal arts, “speaking data even haltingly will be data lingua franca.... How often did William Wordsworth actually write about nature...? Being able to say ‘often’ in data lingua franca will be expected homework before conducting more advanced interpretation and critique.” (608)

“Given [the] history of the liberal arts, where does data science fit in their system...? Or, to ask the even more interesting ... question ... What would liberal arts education look like if restructured to fit data science’s system?” (605)