———- Forwarded message ———
From: Chris Jimenez <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Sep 11, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Subject: [DHSI] CFP: Alphabets and AI (ACLA 2026 Seminar)
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Cc: Alwin Franke <[email protected]>

Dear DHSI Community,
My colleague Alwin Franke and I are co-organizing a seminar on “Alphabets
and AI” for the American Comparative Literature Association’s 2026 Annual
Meeting, which will take place in person at the Palais des congrès de
Montréal, February 26–March 1, 2026.
We would be thrilled for members of the DHSI community to propose a paper
and join us in Montréal. *Abstracts are due by October 2, 2025, with
notifications sent by December 2, 2025. *The full seminar description is
included below.

–

Proposals may be submitted directly through our seminar’s portal: [Submit
a proposal]
(https://www.acla.org/seminar/937065e0-818f-4f6e-9454-8d0c4d9a16fc)
–

More details on the Annual Meeting may be found here: [ACLA Annual
Meeting] (https://www.acla.org/annual-meeting)

Thank you, and please feel free to reach out to me directly with any
questions.

Kind regards,
Christopher D. Jimenez
Associate Professor of English
Stetson University

—

*Alphabets and AI*

This seminar investigates the entangled histories, present tensions, and
speculative futures of alphabets and artificial intelligence. From the
symbolic foundations of written language to the algorithmic architectures
that drive machine learning, alphabets and AI share a deep conceptual
affinity: both transform the world through systems of encoded
signification. This seminar invites scholars to explore how alphabetic
writing systems intersect with AI in literary, linguistic, philosophical,
and cultural contexts.

While the seminar foregrounds “alphabets” as a conceptual anchor, we use
the term capaciously to include other graphemic systems such as syllabaries
(e.g., Japanese kana), abjads (e.g., Arabic), abugidas (e.g., Devanagari),
logographies (e.g., Chinese characters), and hybrid or constructed scripts.
We welcome discussions that critically examine how such diverse
orthographic traditions are represented, distorted, or erased in AI
training corpora and natural language processing pipelines.

How do different writing systems—alphabetic, syllabic, logographic—shape
the ways AI parses and produces language? How does the history of
alphabetization influence the design of large language models and their
biases? What might comparative philology, paleography, or typographic
history contribute to current debates in AI ethics, cognition, and
aesthetics?

Comparative projects that examine AI across multiple scripts, languages, or
media are especially encouraged, including work that bridges Europhone and
non-Europhone contexts or explores scriptural plurality in multilingual
corpora.

We are particularly interested in proposals that approach the topic from a
comparative, translingual, or transmedial perspective. Possible areas of
focus include:

– The algorithmic politics of OCR and NLP across different scripts
– Alphabetic dominance in digital language infrastructures
– AI-generated literature and the limits of orthographic creativity
– Indigenous, non-Latin, or endangered scripts in AI contexts
– Semiotic theory and machine reading
– The aesthetics of AI-generated typography or handwriting
– The role of alphabetization in dataset curation and linguistic
hierarchies
– AI and translation/transcription
– AI and theories of value

We welcome papers from literary studies, media theory, linguistics, digital
humanities, history of writing, AI ethics, and related fields. This seminar
aims to bring together scholars working at the intersection of historical
textual practices and emerging computational paradigms, opening new avenues
for comparative literature in the age of artificial intelligence.
_______________________________________________
Institute mailing list
[email protected]
Unsubscribe via https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/institute

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Chris Jimenez <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Sep 11, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Subject: [DHSI] CFP: Alphabets and AI (ACLA 2026 Seminar)
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Cc: Alwin Franke <[email protected]>

Dear DHSI Community,
My colleague Alwin Franke and I are co-organizing a seminar on “Alphabets
and AI” for the American Comparative Literature Association’s 2026 Annual
Meeting, which will take place in person at the Palais des congrès de
Montréal, February 26–March 1, 2026.
We would be thrilled for members of the DHSI community to propose a paper
and join us in Montréal. *Abstracts are due by October 2, 2025, with
notifications sent by December 2, 2025. *The full seminar description is
included below.

–

Proposals may be submitted directly through our seminar’s portal: [Submit
a proposal]
(https://www.acla.org/seminar/937065e0-818f-4f6e-9454-8d0c4d9a16fc)
–

More details on the Annual Meeting may be found here: [ACLA Annual
Meeting] (https://www.acla.org/annual-meeting)

Thank you, and please feel free to reach out to me directly with any
questions.

Kind regards,
Christopher D. Jimenez
Associate Professor of English
Stetson University

—

*Alphabets and AI*

This seminar investigates the entangled histories, present tensions, and
speculative futures of alphabets and artificial intelligence. From the
symbolic foundations of written language to the algorithmic architectures
that drive machine learning, alphabets and AI share a deep conceptual
affinity: both transform the world through systems of encoded
signification. This seminar invites scholars to explore how alphabetic
writing systems intersect with AI in literary, linguistic, philosophical,
and cultural contexts.

While the seminar foregrounds “alphabets” as a conceptual anchor, we use
the term capaciously to include other graphemic systems such as syllabaries
(e.g., Japanese kana), abjads (e.g., Arabic), abugidas (e.g., Devanagari),
logographies (e.g., Chinese characters), and hybrid or constructed scripts.
We welcome discussions that critically examine how such diverse
orthographic traditions are represented, distorted, or erased in AI
training corpora and natural language processing pipelines.

How do different writing systems—alphabetic, syllabic, logographic—shape
the ways AI parses and produces language? How does the history of
alphabetization influence the design of large language models and their
biases? What might comparative philology, paleography, or typographic
history contribute to current debates in AI ethics, cognition, and
aesthetics?

Comparative projects that examine AI across multiple scripts, languages, or
media are especially encouraged, including work that bridges Europhone and
non-Europhone contexts or explores scriptural plurality in multilingual
corpora.

We are particularly interested in proposals that approach the topic from a
comparative, translingual, or transmedial perspective. Possible areas of
focus include:

– The algorithmic politics of OCR and NLP across different scripts
– Alphabetic dominance in digital language infrastructures
– AI-generated literature and the limits of orthographic creativity
– Indigenous, non-Latin, or endangered scripts in AI contexts
– Semiotic theory and machine reading
– The aesthetics of AI-generated typography or handwriting
– The role of alphabetization in dataset curation and linguistic
hierarchies
– AI and translation/transcription
– AI and theories of value

We welcome papers from literary studies, media theory, linguistics, digital
humanities, history of writing, AI ethics, and related fields. This seminar
aims to bring together scholars working at the intersection of historical
textual practices and emerging computational paradigms, opening new avenues
for comparative literature in the age of artificial intelligence.
_______________________________________________
Institute mailing list
[email protected]
Unsubscribe via https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/institute