Life Writing in the Age of Generative AI: Power, Authorship, and Self-Representation (Panel / In-Person)

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Special Session
Cultural Studies / Composition and Rhetoric

Meghna Gangadharan (Independent Scholar)
phd1@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

This panel reexamines life writing in the age of Generative AI, asking who controls the conditions under which individuals narrate their own lives. Submissions reflecting on how AI corporations and Generative AI models are reshaping life writing practices across textual, digital, and visual formats, or on the consequences of such practices for authorship, equity, and cultural power, are especially welcome.

Generative AI has fundamentally changed how we think, articulate, and write. However, access to AI is not equitable, and its outputs frequently fail to account for diverse lived experiences and reflect biases. The corporations developing AI models are agents actively reshaping how we perceive, think, interpret, and articulate our identities and experiences. This panel examines what that means for Life Writing - defined broadly to include textual, digital, and visual formats - where individuals reflect, narrativize, and present their lived experiences in public-facing contexts. Submissions engaging the conference theme, “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power and Conflict,” are especially welcome. The panel welcomes submissions that explore (but are not limited to):

a) Questions of authorship for AI-assisted/AI-mediated life writings
b) The aesthetics and formal transformations in the practice of Life Writing in the age of Generative AI
c) Life Writings produced by or attributed to Generative AI models
d) The ‘Author’ Persona in AI-generated/AI-mediated Life Writing
e) Autoethnographic explorations of writing life with AI
f) Reader/Audience response to AI-mediated/AI-generated life writings
g) Questions of ethics, trust, and safety, when narrating life with AI
h) Impacts of AI-mediated life writing on individuals from vulnerable and marginalized communities, diverse gender identities, racial, and cultural communities
i) “Permanent Memory” of AI models and archival of individual identities
j) Translation, multilingualism, and cultural limitations of Generative AI in supporting Life Writing activities