Reported by Yuruo Zhang, class of 2027
On August 29, 2025, the Humanities Fall Conference, “Digital Humanities”, was successfully held at Duke Kunshan University, featuring keynote speakers from Duke University and Zhejiang University, as well as faculty presenters from the Arts and Humanities division at DKU.
Dr Mark Hansen, Professor of Literature at Duke University, gave the first academic speech in the morning. He introduced his research and monograph on the concept of “astrotechnical intelligence”. The study lies in the intersection of artificial intelligence studies, media studies, cosmology, science theory, and humancognitive studies, which argues that “information is not merely a medium of communication but the constitutive operation of individuation across biological, technological, and planetary cosmological scales.” Dr Hansen summarised his book chapter by chapter in detail, inspiring the audience to rethink the existence of AI and its relation to human beings.
The afternoon began with a faulty panel, featuring Professor Rui Hu, Professor Jung Choi, Professor Zairong Xiang, Professor Ziv Cohen, Professor Mark Hansen, and Professor Adel-Jing Wang, with Professor Selina Lai-Henderson being the chair. Professor Zairong started with a short talk on AI’s “alienation” as a failed montage and overrepresentation of the bourgeoisie. Followed was a discussion on the nature of AI generation and human creation in terms of “artworks”. After that, they delved into topics such as the cosmology of lullabies and children’s relationships with AI.
Dr Adel Wang, Professor of Sound Studies at Zhejiang University, presented her research on machine listening and creative sound practices. Her work examined how sound infrastructures reshape humans’ listening, taking the microphone as a particular medium. The talk mainly consisted of three parts: “the ubiquitous mediation by mic–algorithm pipelines, an aesthetic drift toward clarity and punch over slowness and ambiguity, and memory politics that archive alerts while erasing atmospheres. ”
Professor Benjamin Bacon and Professor Vivian Xu delivered a talk on entanglements across collapsed and extended spatial and temporal configurations that bridge the biological and the computational. Professor Odelia Lu looked into the Cantonese dialogue and swear words in video games like Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption II, and Sleeping Dogs. She investigated how translation and subtitle conventions impacted the identity of diasporic players. Professor Giovanni Santini explored the similarity and intertextuality between music and XR, both as transformations of space and time. Four students— Jackie Lyu, Taylord Zhu, Nick Nie, and Rong Chen— led an interactive conversation with the three speakers after their speech.
Each session was followed by rounds of intellectually stimulating Q&A. In the evening, students and faculty gathered together in the gala dinner and celebrated faculty publications during the last year. Over nine faculty members shared their inspiring writings and conveyed sincere gratitude for the support from not only HRC but also every student who contributed to the publication process.
The Humanities Research Center would like to thank all the students and faculty who participated in this event. Thank you!
