Rita Raley
Professor
Rita Raley is Professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, with courtesy appointments in Film and Media Studies, Comparative Literature, and Global Studies. Her recent work engaging AI/machine learning from a humanities perspective has been published in PMLA; Digital Humanities Quarterly; American Literature; Poetics Today; Understanding Flusser, Understanding Modernism; Public; and symplokē. She has an essay on generative AI in the forthcoming volume, Informatics of Domination, and is currently working on a project on GPT-2.
In addition to previous teaching positions at the University of Minnesota, Rice, and NYU, she has held fellowship and short-term residency appointments hosted by the National Humanities Center; the University of Bergen, Norway; the Dutch Foundation for Literature in Amsterdam; the UC Humanities Research Institute; and UCLA, the last as part of a Mellon-funded project on the Digital Humanities. She co-edits the “Electronic Mediations” book series for the University of Minnesota Press and is an Associate Editor for ASAP/Journal.
//–> For the “critical machine learning” project, see a recent interview together with Fabian Offert on the UCHRI Foundry site, along with the new Center for the Humanities and Machine Learning.
//–> For public writing on AI, see this piece on the “university as a service” in a recent issue of The Chronicle.
//–> For a collaborative field articulation of “Critical AI,” see this special issue of American Literature.
Selected administrative experience: Chair, Academic Senate (2024-2026); Vice-Chair, Academic Senate (2020-2022; 2023-2024); Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee (2020-2024); UC Humanities Research Institute Advisory Committee (2015-2018); Chair, UCSB Program Review Panel (2015-2017 [member and vice-chair, 2013-2015]); Chair, UCSB Graduate Council (2011-2012); UC Coordinating Committee on Graduate Affairs (2011-2012); IHC Advisory Board (2005-2008).
Research Areas
- c. 1945-present
- Digital Humanities
- Global Literatures
- Media Studies
- Science and Technology Studies