As LLMs become more engrained in daily life, something unexpected has happened: style has taken on new value. For good reason, academic work has traditionally had less investment in style. But for humanists today, style and storytelling are ways to resist the machine and invest more deeply in our own critical tools and imaginations. This workshop will consider alternate models, particularly fiction, in an era of flattened prose. We’ll look to objects like Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s “The Tumor with a Human Face,” Adolfo Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel, and Marie NDiaye’s That Time of Year to think about how narrative, imagination, and style have always served as methods of theorization.

RSVP for the lunch workshop by emailing cvcps@mailplus.wisc.edu.