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It would be difficult to understand the present without recourse to the concept of “data.” “Data” is everywhere and at all scales. It defines our understanding of the planet and its climate crises; it circulates between countries in innumerable forms, from currencies to memes; it affects every profession and field; it shapes what we eat, how we sleep, what we wear; it affects our senses of ourselves as individuals and collectives. As Noah Yuval Harari has argued, we are witnessing a “shift in authority in almost all fields of human activity.” If we once looked to a God in “the clouds” for authoritative guidance, we are increasingly now looking for such guidance in “the Cloud,” as algorithms, guided by data, seem to know us, “even better than we know ourselves.” (The recent advent of AI “Jesus” in a church in Switzerland is surely this moment’s apotheosis.) This course will attempt to come to terms with this new faith, reading both popular nonfiction (like Harari’s Homo Deus) and fiction (may include Eggers’ The Circle, Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Powers’ The Overstory, Okorafor’s Death of the Author, or Wilson’s Robopocalypse). Throughout, we will ask what role literary studies might have in a data-driven world.

Students should expect to read extensively, participate actively, and write independently (without the “aid” of AI).