The Leslie Center Seminars on Humanities and Technologies

We are excited to announce The Leslie Center Seminars on Humanities and Technologies. The series invites humanities faculty at Dartmouth to engage together in open inquiry, exploration, and critique regarding the challenges and opportunities that contemporary technologies pose for our work.

The Seminars involve pre-reading, panel discussions, and active participation during the sessions. Open to all humanities faculty and postdocs. Registration is required. 

The schedule of events for Spring 2026 can be found below. This page will be updated with more details and further event listings as they become available.

SPRING 2026 EVENTS

Thursday, April 23rd, 4:00pm-5:30pm: "What Do Grades Mean in the Age of AI?"

Lecture and discussion by Josh Eyler (University of Mississippi, Senior Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning and Assistant Professor of Teacher Education).

Traditional methods of grading have never been able to adequately account for the learning that happens in the Arts and Humanities, where growth and development are measured not by tests and numbers, but by creative choices, productive failures, new ideas, and unfolding understanding. While this has always been true, the rise of generative, assistive, and agentic AI demands that we now ask more pointed questions about the viability of grades for measuring student learning. In this talk, Eyler will discuss research that explores the limitations of traditional grades, the problems with "grade inflation" narratives, and a future that centers different models of grading that more comfortably align with the goals of Arts and Humanities disciplines.

Tuesday, May 5th, 12:15pm-2:00pm: "Humanities Thinking About AI"

Panel featuring Jennifer Rhee (English, Virginia Commonwealth University, on AI and visions of humanness) and Kris Paulsen (History of Art, Ohio State University, on intersections of Art and AI). 

This seminar explores current humanities-based inquiry into AI: What different technologies share the label 'AI'? How does the history of its development and financing affect what AI does and for whom it's useful? What questions and methods are humanities scholars currently applying in their analyses of AI? What particular challenges do we face as humanities scholars thinking about AI?

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PAST EVENTS

Past events that took place in the series during Winter 2026 can be found below.

Text+Textiles+Technology: Threaded Ecologies (Feb. 16-20)

A workshop organized by postdoctoral fellow Hayri Dortdivanlioglu (Society of Fellows, Studio Art) that investigates the ecologies of text, textile, and technology through weaving as a mode of material inquiry into technology's agency in co-generating new ways of knowing across disciplines. Seminar events for humanities faculty will be held as part of the workshop.

Humanities Thinking About AI (Feb. 24, 12:15pm-2:00pm)

This seminar explores current humanities-based inquiry into AI: What different technologies share the label 'AI'? How does the history of its development and financing affect what AI does and for whom it's useful? What questions and methods are humanities scholars currently applying in their analyses of AI? What particular challenges do we face as humanities scholars thinking about AI?

D. Graham Burnett (Mar. 2)

A visit by D. Graham Burnett (Princeton University) that includes a seminar discussion for faculty on AI/Humanities/Attention, and a public book talk on Attensity!, a new book by The Friends of Attention.

Mar. 2, 12:00pm-2:00pm: Humanities/AI/Attention

Mar. 2, 3:30pm-4:30pm: Attensity! Book Talk

Humanities Teaching With/out AI (Mar. 5, 12:30pm-2:15pm)

What, if any, are productive uses of Al in higher education courses? This seminar convenes humanities faculty to discuss whether and how Al might contribute to pedagogy in our classrooms as a teaching and learning aid. We will hear from colleagues who have experimented with the affordances of AI in this context as well as from those who have not found it useful. We will discuss this in the context of theories of learning in the liberal arts.

Humanities Thinking With AI (Mar. 10, 12:15pm-2:00pm)

Al is often touted as a source of significant potential for work in STEM-related fields and research, but its role in humanities research is less frequently discussed. This seminar will focus on the potential for Al as a tool in specifically humanities-based research and practice.