Paideia Text and Issues Lecture

“On You It Rests:” Teaching Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” Professor of English, Amy Weldon presents the first Paideia Text and Issues lecture of the 2026-27 academic year.  Agency is an important word in artificial intelligence now, and in life, since so-called “agentic” AI can use other software to complete a human-initiated task. Yet agency, the capacity and freedom to act in the service of futures we care about, is literally what AI is stealing from humans and nonhumans right now. As a landmark technological tale built on the human medium of character (which, like agency, means multiple things), Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus (1818) can help us reclaim our human agency in our increasingly AI-intensive world by building our capacities to honestly face a “monster,” muster our courage and curiosity, and ask the right questions about three big issues embodied by both the Creature and our approaches to AI right now.