Lecture Information
Time: 10:00–12:00, April 11, 2026
Speakers:
Professor N. Katherine Hayles (University of California, Los Angeles)
Professor Wang Ning (Shanghai Jiao Tong University / Shanghai University)
Host: Professor Jiang Yuqin (Shenzhen University)
Discussants:
Professor Wang Quan (Beihang University)
Associate Professor Lyu Guangzhao (Fudan University)
Zoom Meeting Information
Meeting ID: 819 9369 0665
Passcode: 630580
Meeting Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81993690665?pwd=UV4hGETawSBJosctXzzTWcTYPstZe5.1
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The Cognitive Subject: The Future of Human and Non-Human Symbionts
Speaker Biography
N. Katherine Hayles is a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the James B. Duke Professor Emerita of Literature at Duke University. Her research focuses on the relationships among literature, science, and technology in the 20th and 21st centuries. She has published twelve books, including Postprint: Books and Computation (Columbia University Press, 2021), Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious (University of Chicago Press, 2017), How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and From Bacteria to AI: The Human Future of Living with Non-Human Symbionts (University of Chicago Press, 2025), as well as more than one hundred peer-reviewed articles. Her books have received numerous awards, including the René Wellek Prize for the best book in literary theory for How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics and the Susanne Langer Award for Writing Machines. She has been the recipient of many fellowships and awards, including two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency Fellowship, and two UC President’s Research Fellowships.
Abstract: One of the factors contributing to the collapse of Earth;s ecosystems is anthropocentrism, the belief that Homo sapiens is superior to all other species. This view is supported by the notion that humans possess superior cognitive abilities. Therefore, the key to restoring sanity, sustainability, and ecological balance lies in re-evaluating cognition. The Integrated Cognitive Framework (ICF) proposes a relational definition of cognition as a process of interpreting information within a context that links information to meaning. This definition extends cognitive practices and meaning-making to non-human living beings as well as to artificial intelligences such as large language models. In developed societies, most of the work is done by cognitive assemblages—collectives of humans, non-humans, and computational media through which information, interpretation, and decision-making flow. The broader context in which the ICF operates is ecological relationality. This lecture explores its significance through case studies, including the cognitive capacities of microorganisms. It also investigates the cognitive capacities of computational media by analyzing the architecture and text generation of large language models, particularly OpenAI’s Transformer model. Replacing liberal political philosophy with ecological relationality enables us to assume responsibility without re-establishing human dominance, and to make choices that favor a future in which both humans and non-humans flourish together.
Lecture Introduction: Digital Humanities Challenges in Comparative Literature
Speaker Biography
Wang Ning is Dean and Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the Institute of Humanities and Arts, Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Distinguished Professor (Special Appointment) at Shanghai University; and Changjiang Distinguished Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tsinghua University. In 2000, he was awarded the State Council Special Government Allowance. He was elected a Fellow of the Latin American Academy of Sciences in 2010, a Changjiang Scholar of the Ministry of Education in 2011, a Foreign Member of the Academia Europaea in 2013, and in 2026, he was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the International Academy of Literary Arts and awarded the Global Outstanding Achievement Award in Literary and Cultural Theory. He also serves as a review expert for the Chinese Literature Group of the National Social Science Fund, a review expert for the Changjiang Scholars Program of the Ministry of Education, and a review expert for the Ten Thousand Talent Program (Leading Talents in Philosophy and Social Sciences) and National-Level Distinguished Teachers under the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the CPC. His academic affiliations include Academic Advisor to the Chinese Comparative Literature Association and Vice President of the Chinese Society of Sino-Foreign Literary Theory. Professor Wang Ning has published extensively, with particular expertise in modernity theory, postmodernism, globalization and cultural issues, world literature, and translation studies. In addition to publishing five English monographs, over twenty Chinese monographs, and more than 500 Chinese articles, he has also published over 150 English essays in more than forty international authoritative journals or edited volumes, with over 110 of these essays indexed in SSCI or A&HCI databases. Some of his works have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, German, Korean, Russian, Serbian, French, Arabic, and other languages. For many years, he has been listed as a Highly Cited Chinese Researcher by Elsevier. In 2024, he was again included in Stanford–Elsevier’s list of the World’s Top 2% Scientists (Literary Studies), both in the annual impact ranking and the career-long impact ranking.
Abstract: In the current era of artificial intelligence, humanities scholars in the international academic community are vigorously discussing and even debating the issue of digital humanities, as if this technological approach could truly help the humanities overcome their predicaments and build a bridge between technology and the humanities. Nevertheless, digital humanities has indeed had a transformative impact on our teaching and academic research, and it has undoubtedly brought challenges to the research and teaching of traditional humanities scholars. This lecture will build on the academic presentation by N. Katherine Hayles and further elaborate on the feasibility and applicability of distant reading methods in the study of comparative literature and world literature.
Host Biography
Jiang Yuqin, Ph.D., Professor at the School of Humanities, Shenzhen University; Vice Dean of the Jao Tsung-I Academy of Culture; Deputy Director of the Institute of Comparative Literature and Comparative Culture; Director of the Digital Humanities Research Center, School of Humanities; Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge; Visiting Scholar at the University of Toronto. Her academic affiliations include: Member of the Council of the Chinese Comparative Literature Association; Vice Chair of the World Literature and Literary Theory Committee of the Chinese Comparative Literature Association; Standing Member of the Foreign Literature Committee of the Chinese Higher Education Society; Standing Member of the Chinese Comparative Literature Teaching Branch; and Member of the Teaching Branch of the Chinese Foreign Literature Association. She has published over 60 papers in domestic and international journals indexed by A&HCI, SSCI, CSSCI, etc., authored 2 monographs, edited 4 collections, and led multiple national and provincial/ministerial research projects. Her main research interests include science fiction literature and cultural theory.
Discussant Biographies
Wang Quan is a Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the School of Foreign Languages, Beihang University. His main research areas include literary theory, American fiction, Chinese culture, Zhuangzi, and posthumanism. His research expertise covers critical theory, American fiction, and the thought of Zhuangzi, with particular focus on Edgar Allan Poe and posthumanism. His primary research interests are British and American literature and comparative literature. He has published 42 A&HCI-indexed articles in leading international journals such as Textual Practice, Asian Philosophy, Journal of Literary Studies, Journal of European Studies, and Women’s Studies.
Lyu Guangzhao is an Associate Professor at the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Fudan University. He is a Shanghai Pujiang Talent, a member of the Shanghai Science Writers’ Association, a “Qihang Scholar” of the China Science Fiction Research Center, and a Young Scholar of the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA). His primary research interest is science fiction literature.
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