CCHS Bingham Faculty Fellowships

Image Credit: Stills from "Mordançage Timelapse" (process video) 2024 by John Day, MFA candidate at the Hite Institute of Art + Design, UofL

Being Human in the AI Era

The Commonwealth Center for Humanities and Society develops an annual theme that provides the foundation for the academic year's scheduled events, including the Bingham Faculty Fellows program. The theme for the 2025-2026 academic year will be Being Human in the AI Era. Fellows applying may specialize in areas that can inform a range of adjacent conversations regarding the role of AI today.

The rhetoric around generative AI can be hyperbolic. Whether euphoric or dystopic, this rhetoric depicts a future of technological, political, social, linguistic, medical, ethical, material, and economic disruption that seems largely out of our control. And yet, this is not a given. In fact, humanists can challenge totalizing narratives through their contextualizing, analytic, creative, and ethical expertise. This expertise can shift conversations from what is possible to, What is advisable? What can history teach us? What unexamined assumptions need to be addressed? Who or what is absent from the dominant stories? Such questions can enrich our understanding of the emergent and entangled forces assembling around generative AI which, in turn, can guide how we choose to act when engaging with AI's promise and pitfalls.

We imagine the 2025-26 Fellows may explore this theme in a variety of ways, including but not limited to the following questions:

• How does generative AI inform what it means to be "human"? How can AI shape the ways artists, ethicists, gerontologists, politicians, teachers, activists, linguists, entrepreneurs, and/or energy managers ask questions about what is good for us?
• How can Indigenous and marginalized communities safeguard their languages, ways of knowing, and cultural heritage in an age where artificial intelligence hungers for data? What sovereign protections and ethical frameworks must we establish to ensure AI development respects minoritized groups' knowledge and intellectual property rights?
• What can we learn from the past technological disruptions – about surveillance, resource allocation, educational possibilities, ethical compromises? What do these examples teach us about the likely winners and losers based on these disruptions?
• How do we handle when technological advances and their material impacts outstrip existing guardrails? How do we contend with fake news and misinformation; problematic image generation; consumption of scarce energy resources; exploitative labor practices of large language models scraping our materials without our consent and then charging us for the services generated by such practices? How are the energy and data storage needs for AI impacting the material reality of our communities and world, now and into an uncertain future?
• What are the best ways to help people learn to work with the possibilities of AI, for example, to speed medical research, expand translation services, inform accessibility, and provide timely feedback to community members, students, and clients? What are the implications of AI on how we produce and name what counts as scientific knowledge?
• What do the hyped benefits tell us about deep seated problems that generative AI is being asked to redress? For example, how is AI being asked to address parasocial relationships, at times lauded for comforting those in senior living facilities while at other times vilified for harming youth who, after engaging with AI bots, have committed suicide?
• Has generative AI become the straw figure, blamed for radical societal and economic changes? Conversely, is generative AI the symbol of consolidated political and economic power exploiting individuals without providing space to push back? What is our responsibility under these conditions? Is a third space possible?
• What AI adjacent models can help think creatively about how to tap generative AI's benefits and mitigate unwanted disruptions? For example, what can we learn from virtual environments helping veterans process PTSD?
• What theories and methodologies best explore questions of ethics and technology within humanities scholarship?
• How can humanities scholarship shed (historical) light on how we work and play, connect and stay private in an era of technological disruption?

ABOUT THE BINGHAM FACULTY FELLOWSHIP

For 2025-2026, the Commonwealth Center for Humanities and Society seeks to create an intellectually diverse group of up to six fellows who will benefit from conducting their research in a multidisciplinary setting. We are seeking a mix of tenured and tenure-track A&S faculty

engaged in humanistic scholarship. People who have received a CCHS fellowship in the past are eligible to apply, though CCHS Advisory Board members are not eligible to apply.

Fellows are required to be in residence during the academic year, to present one lecture or one workshop on their research, and to participate in all the bi-monthly activities while completing their own research projects. We support amazing opportunities available to you, but if you cannot make these meetings, you should apply in a future year.

Fellows actively shape CCHS programming for the academic year, from inviting distinguished guest speakers to finding innovative ways to share scholarship with our arts and culture partners in the community; CCHS can help engaged scholars connect to these cultural partners.

Fellows receive one course release.

Fellows receive a supplemental research/travel stipend from CCHS estimated at $1,500 (pre-tax).

YOUR APPLICATION

Applications are due Sunday, January 12th, 2025, and require:

Current CV

Proposal of up to 1,000 words. Primarily, your proposal should describe a project you will pursue as a Fellow, what outcomes you anticipate, and how that project connects to this year's theme. While theoretical, empirical, historical, sociocultural, and creative approaches in the humanities and social science are all welcome, your proposal should indicate how your project connects to humanities questions, projects and/or methodologies. Secondarily, your application should describe how your project would benefit from collaboration with scholars in other humanities-related fields. If you have received a fellowship in the past, briefly (1-2 sentences) note the outcomes of your previous fellowship.

Brief letter of support from applicant's department chairperson. This letter guarantees one course release and assures a teaching schedule that will not conflict with Fellow's bi-monthly Friday meetings (12:00-1:00). This letter also comments on the substance of the application as well as the applicant's ability both to work in a collaborative setting and to make all BFF meetings.

Please email all materials to the CCHS Project Coordinator, Emily Ravenscraft, emily.ravenscraft@louisville.edu. Fellows will be appointed by the Dean, as recommended by the CCHS Advisory Board, and will be named at the end of January 2025.