International Symposium on Digital Humanities in the Anthropocene.

Christ University, Pune Lavasa campus, in collaboration with IIT Jodhpur and  Amity Institute of English Studies and Research (AIESR) at AUUP organised the 1st International Symposium on “Digital Humanities in the Anthropocene” from January 15 to January 17, 2025. 

The event was graced by Prof. Sanjeev Bansal, Additional Pro Vice Chancellor of AUUP-NOIDA, addressed the participants, highlighting the evolution of research and education facilitated by the availability and use of digital resources. The inaugural session was attended by Prof. Ranjana Bhatia, Domain Head—AIHSSJ_II at Amity NOIDA, and Dr. Manohar Sajnani, Dean of the Faculty of Hospitality & Tourism and Director of AITT. Prof. Scott Rettberg from the University of Bergen, Norway, delivered the inaugural keynote address. His engaging presentation focused on AI and Digital Narrative, exploring the role of authorship in the era of large language models (LLMs) and text-to-image generation. Prof. Rettberg explained the workings of AI-driven models and discussed related philosophical dilemmas. Prof. Shantanu Ghosh gave an expert talk on social cognition and digital memory. He provided a historical overview of AI’s development, from Artificial Neural Networks and connectionist theory to the transformer technology that learns context and meaning from sequential data. His insightful talk centred on the representation of structure in mental space. 

The first day of the symposium featured research presentations from academics both within and outside Amity University. Dr. Avishek Parui from IIT Madras delivered the concluding keynote address on the first day of the symposium, focusing on the intersection of Digital Humanities and creativity in literary studies. He explored the concept of “digicorporeality”– the convergence of digitalization and corporeality – an idea grounded in historical perspectives where humanity has conceptualized identity as extending beyond the physical body. In this context, Dr. Parui argued that digitization should be understood as a diachronic process rather than a sudden, isolated phenomenon.

The second day of the event commenced with a highly engaging lecture by Dr. Nina Beguš of University of California, Berkeley, who introduced the concept and domain of Artificial Humanities. She enlightened the audience on the influence of fiction, which embodies desires that contribute to shaping the future. Dr. Beguš highlighted the Greek legend of Pygmalion, which served as the foundation for George Bernard Shaw’s play and George Cukor’s film adaptation. Dr. Richa Mishra, from Nirma University, delivered the keynote address for the day, providing a comprehensive overview of the development and sustainability of Digital Humanities as a field. She emphasised that language, as a subfield of semiotics, relies extensively on various modes of communication to ensure the accurate transfer of meaning. Dr. Mishra cited traditional Indian cultural forms, such as Kaavad Katha and the Pandavani Musical Theatre tradition, as examples of such modes. Samya Brata Roy, a researcher from IIT Jodhpur, presented an insightful talk on the field of Electronic Literatures. He emphasised the importance of media-specific analysis in literature and underscored the significant role of organisations like the Electronic Literature Organisation (ELO) in the development of this field. Roy also highlighted the challenges faced by researchers in emerging disciplines, particularly in terms of securing funding and publications.

The event also featured both offline and online panels for research presentations on a variety of topics, including community-based language revitalization, gaming as a medium for storytelling, and the role of makeup and visual heritage as fundamental representations of technology. These sessions were presented by academics from both within and outside Amity University. The third day of the event started with Ms. Radhika Khattar’s session on “The Human Element in the Digital Workplace” with a very engaging and interactive lecture which was deeply appreciated by the students. Further, we had Dr. Sundar Narayanan joined us for an online lecture on the Ethical Considerations of AI, which once again was very intriguing. It garnered many questions from the audience on the very debatable uses of AI. 

The third day also had four parallel sessions of paper presentations from academics from both within and outside Amity University. The day ended with a lecture by Prof. Mats Fridlund who spoke about Digital Text Analysis and Historical Research. This intersection of literature and linguistics is the backbone of this first International Symposium on Digital Humanities in the Anthropocene.