Humanities at Large is a podcast from the Jackman Humanities Institute that features conversations with our Fellows—scholars, artists and thinkers—who explore how the humanities can offer fresh perspectives on historic and contemporary issues. Organized around an annual theme, Humanities at Large is a must-listen for anyone passionate about the power of ideas! Series 1 includes conversations with Teresa Heffernan, Chloe Bordewich, Nilanjan Das, Jane Wolff, Olivia Shortt and Kamari Maxine Clarke.
Host Melissa Gismondi (she/her) is an award-winning writer and audio producer. She holds a PhD in American history and was the 2020-2021 New Media Public Humanities Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute.
Listen now below or on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Deezer or Player FM.
Series 1—Absence
Absence takes many forms - absence as loss, abandonment, and omission; absence as exile, separation, and unbelonging; and, paradoxically, absence as boundless, infinite, and transcendent. Ways of knowing, communal memory, as well as personal and cultural identities are all shaped, challenged, and even denied by various types of absences. Voids, silences, privations, gaps and solitudes are forces in themselves. What is not there can be even more powerful than what is there. How does absence affect our views of and place in the world? What meaning can we make of those “blank void regions”? What happens when absence is present? How are today's technologies and our networked world challenging the binary distinction of presence and absence?
Episode 1—Absence of Intelligence: the Science and Fiction of AI
Teresa Heffernan joins host Melissa Gismondi for a conversation about artificial intelligence (AI). They discuss topics like the public's perception of AI, as well as AI's limitations, environmental impact, and its relationship with fiction. They also touch on the narratives and hype surrounding AI, the concentration of wealth and power in the tech industry, and the need for regulation and ethical considerations in AI development. Teresa Heffernan was the JHI's 2023-24 Visiting Public Humanities Faculty Fellow and her research questioned what it means to speak of human-like qualities, like creativity or intelligence or ethics, in the absence of life.