Fan letter I wrote to journalist Alina Tugend for her “Building a Thriving Humanities Program,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 25, 2025, www.chronicle.com/report/licen.... (A non-paywalled PDF here: www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/cor... )

Like many DH colleagues, I've been testing the vibe coding waters. As a case study, I ended up re-engineering Andrew Goldstone's dfr-browser for exploring topic models. github.com/scottkleinma... It has a bright new look, a lot of new features, and it's hopefully easier to use. +

I agree with this from your blog post: "In the end, I might have benefited more from watching the Browser work and "think" than from the actual output it produced." Just seeing how Fellou.ai structured and staged its research gave me great ideas on how to improve my research strategy.

A portrait of influence: my ridiculously over-annotated copy of John Guillory’s _Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation_. I hadn’t looked at my physical copy for years but pulled it off the shelf today to recommend to a grad student a line of thought that John develops.

Very excited about this forthcoming volume in the Debates in the Digital Humanities series! @uminnpress.bsky.social @alanyliu.bsky.social @laurenfklein.bsky.social

Exciting book out early next year! It will be open access 6 months after print publication. I have a chapter in there on shadow libraries as infrastructure. Edited by @alanyliu.bsky.social, Urszula Pawlicka-Deger, and James Smithies www.upress.umn.edu/978151791608...

I'm getting great benefit from what might be called "adversarial generative prompting." For complex research (e.g., see my post on using Fellou.ai agentic AI: bsky.app/profile/alan...), I ask several LLMs to critique & improve my prompt in detailed ways before burning credits in running the prompt.

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.

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...

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...

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...

"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...

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.

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?”

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.

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.

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...

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

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....

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.

My article on “Data Science and the Post-Liberal Arts University” just came out in the summer 2025 issue of Critical Inquiry, criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/current_issue/

New interview/post by Christine Henseler on our Center for Humanities Communication’s blog: “Johanna Drucker on Identification, Imagination, and Problem-solving to Communicate the Humanities.” center-humanities-communication.org/humcomm-talk...

Close reading is careful interpretation of a text, emphasizing attention to individual words and syntax and the unfolding of structure and meaning. Are LLMs capable of close reading? Newstok and @alanyliu.bsky.social have compiled this list. liu.english.ucsb.edu/machine-lear...

Scott Newstok today sent me a list of scholarship on machine learning/AI & “close reading” (and related materials) culled from his Close Reading Archive, with permission to share. I’ve put it up in a post: liu.english.ucsb.edu/machine-lear...

Learned from Scott Newstok of this study of large language models that evaluates their use for "1) close reading as a form of reasoning … 2) college-level knowledge in the literary domain & 3) figurative language understanding as ... reading comprehension” arxiv.org/abs/2505.09825

Age perspective is so rarely considered in leading-edge work in humanities and arts. As in other areas such as music, science, programming—edgy, avant-garde work is a Brooklyn, as it were, of early to mid-career professionals and creatives. What does such work look like to the young & old?

@alanyliu.bsky.social Scott Newstok sent me this-- recording from yesterday: englishassociation.ac.uk/close-readin...

In my experience, an author's writings have a short half-life for their own author. I rarely read my publications after a year or so. Someone reminded me of my 1996 essay, “The New Historicism and the Work of Mourning.” Surprised by my earlier self. it's pretty good. www.jstor.org/stable/25601...

I was absorbed by NY Times Style issue “J Is for Japan.” @ligayamishan.bsky.social’s essay on “Darker Side of Japan’s Love of Cuteness” is wonderful—richly extending works like Sianne Ngai’s on cuteness in the specific register of all things astro_boy & hello_kitty. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/t...

Blast from the past: In 1994 I wrote an “Ultrabasic Guide to the Internet -- For Humanities Users at UCSB.” 124 page. Self-published & sold through my university’s bookstore. Here’s a PDF: liu.english.ucsb.edu/wp-content/d.... I can’t believe the effort I put into this back then!

New on Center for Humanities Communication’s _HumComm Talk_ blog: Christine Henseler interviews former U.S. diplomat André Goodfriend on engaging students in humanities: center-humanities-communication.org/humcomm-talk.... One theme: playful learning in the humanities, including in digital games.

It was a lot of work to redesign my essay assignments for a large lecture course to provide an option for writing with AI that does not increase the grading workload of my TAs. Here is the AI option in my course on media, information, & communication over the ages: alanyliu.org/courses/engl....

Simple AI hack I now rely on for dressing up images in slide presentations: ask generative AI to upscale the resolution of an attached image, sharpen it, make background transparent, etc. For ordinary work, it’s faster/easier than firing up an image editor program for the purpose.

This was a great session; recording coming soon @modernlanguage.bsky.social

Enjoyed joining the MLA’s webinar yesterday on using the new MLA Guidelines for Evaluating Digital Scholarship. I was asked to prepare an overview of our MLA Committee on Information Technology’s goals for the new guidelines (www.mla.org/About-Us/Gov...). Here are my notes for that (screenshot).

Today at 2 p.m. ET: join our webinar on using the MLA's new guidelines for evaluating digital scholarship. Hear from @aearhart.bsky.social, @alanyliu.bsky.social, @roopikarisam.bsky.social, & @sferna.bsky.social on using the guidelines as candidates & as evaluators. www.mla.org/Resources/Ca...

I’ve used topic models a lot. Now trying AI to help interpret models with prompts like, “[looking at uploaded MALLET files], what are most interesting topics related to [Y]” or “which topics & docs are most associated with [Z].” Promising results; but will need to validate (Examples from Claude 3.7)

📣 The Public Interest Corpus Update – Boston Edition 📣 publicinterestcorpus.org/the-public-i...

A structural dilemma in adapting for AI in large (vs. small) courses like mine at a university with a TA union contract: how to create assignments that adapt to or defend against AI that do not increase TA labor. Great guidelines like acue.org/blog/unlocki... automatically increase TA labor time.

This is a wonderful piece on good, allowable uses of generative AI for students: Liza Long, “Using Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools in Literary Analysis,” cwi.pressbooks.pub/lit-crit/cha.... It inspired me to revise my own course policy on AI use in this way: alanyliu.org/courses/inte...

This CFP for a session at the 2025 Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) conference is quite interesting in its focus on the migration of data across national borders, and the gatekeepers and processes for that. www.historyoftechnology.org/wp-content/u...

New on our Center for Humanities Communication’s blog: 3-part interview series by Cheryl Sadowski on high-impact leaders & professionals who started with humanities degrees. 1st post: on Kirsten Dueck, CEO of social-enterprise investing org NESsT. center-humanities-communication.org/humcomm-talk...

I had occasion in advising a student on careers to recall my mini-video on “Why the Humanities Matter: A Story About Borders.” Starts with memory of telling my dad I was changing from a science to an English major: a big deal in a family of Asian engineer immigrants to the U.S. vimeo.com/84252711

🔍 I built an 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧-𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥 in just a few hours on a Sunday morning while reviewing academic papers for my Ph.D. The app generates AI-driven summaries from recent abstracts in top journals. 🔗 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬. #OpenSource #Research #AI #ResearchTools #Media #Communication

Interesting. I'm currently working on the MALLET interface for Lexos and have been using Claude 3.5 to help with test functions (with limited success). But the lesson here is that we need to start thinking about AI as a (the?) potential user when we design our software...

I’m getting excellent results using the new Claude 3.7 Sonnet to code in Python for text analysis. I’m a humanities scholar who is self-trained only up to the level of semi-coding skills (I'm mainly a scavenger coder messing with others' code). So this is a big deal. www.anthropic.com/claude/sonnet

Already a time capsule, but back in January a bunch of us working at the intersection of the humanities and AI/ML came together to sketch out eight provocations from the humanities for genAI research. Here's a 🧵 1/ arxiv.org/abs/2502.19190