• Office:
    South Hall 2703
  • Office Hours:
    by appointment
  • Mailing Address:

    Academic Senate business: rita.raley@senate.ucsb.edu

    all else: ritaraley@protonmail.com or rraley@ucsb.edu

    English Department
    UC Santa Barbara
    Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3170
  • Personal Website

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).

Past and upcoming events

Research Areas

  • c. 1945-present
  • Digital Humanities
  • Global Literatures
  • Media Studies
  • Science and Technology Studies

Research Center Affiliations

  • Office:
    South Hall 2703
  • Office Hours:
    by appointment
  • Mailing Address:

    Academic Senate business: rita.raley@senate.ucsb.edu

    all else: ritaraley@protonmail.com or rraley@ucsb.edu

    English Department
    UC Santa Barbara
    Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3170
  • Personal Website

Selected Lectures

Rita Raley's Bookshelf

Courses Taught