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From the 10th International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies, hosted by the Center For Mark Twain Studies, comes a conversation about how scholars nineteenth-century culture and media technology analyze the contemporary AI boom and broader changes to the media ecosystem of the 21st century.
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Lauren Goodlad, Jeff Jarvis, Gregg Camfield, Jess Goldberg
Date Recorded: July 30, 2026
Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby
Featured Guests
Lauren M. E. Goodlad is Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University and the Chair of Rutger’s interdisciplinary initiative in Critical AI, co-organized by the Center for Cultural Analysis and the Center For Cognitive Science. She is also the founding editor of Critical AI, published by Duke University Press. Her long record of scholarship includes The Victorian Geopolitical Aesthetic (Oxford UP, 2015) and Victorian Literature & The Victorian State (Johns Hopkins UP, 2003).
Jeff Jarvis is Visiting Professor in the School of Communication & Journalism at Stony Brook University and Distinguished Fellow in Montclair State’s Center for Cooperative Media. His long career in journalism includes founding Entertainment Weekly, being a TV critic for People and TV Guide, and blogging at Buzzmachine. His most recent books include The Gutenberg Parenthesis (Bloomsbury, 2023), Magazine (Bloomsbury, 2023), and Hot Type (Bloomsbury, 2026).
Matt Seybold is Associate Professor for American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies, host of The American Vandal Podcast, and a member of the AAUP subcommittee on Artificial Intelligence & Academic Professions.
Episode Bibliography
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935)
Walter Benjamin, “Theses On The Philosophy of History” (1940)
James W. Carey, Communication As Culture: Essays on Media & Society (1992) [2008 Routledge Revised Edition]
Molly Crabapple, “Vampire Slop” Critical AI (April 2026)
Charles Dickens, "Sketches by ‘Boz’” (1833-1836)
Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press As An Agent of Change(Cambridge UP, 1980)
Timnit Gebru & Émile P. Torres, “The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics & The Promise of Utopia Through Artificial Intelligence” First Monday (April 2024)
Jess A. Goldberg, Abolition Time: Grammars of Law, Poetics of Justice (U Minnesota, 2024)
Lauren M. E. Goodlad, “We Have Always Been Action Theorists: Toward a Critical Theory of Language for the Era of ‘Large Language Models’” Representations (Summer 2026)
Lauren M. E. Goodlad, “Victorian ‘Artificial Intelligence’: An Ongoing History” Genealogies of Datafication (2023)
Lauren M. E. Goodlad & Katherine Bode, “Data Worlds: An Introduction” Critical AI (October 2023)
Jeff Jarvis, Hot Type: The Magnificent Machine That Gave Birth To Mass Media (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Jeff Jarvis, The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print & Its Lessons For The Age of The Internet (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Jeff Jarvis, “AI Communism” BuzzMachine (July 27, 2026)
Jeff Jarvis, Magazine (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Matthew Kirshenbaum, “The Writing Lesson Revisited: AI [and | in | is] the Scriptural Economy” Social Research (Summer 2026)
Matthew Kirschenbaum, “When Words Are No Longer For Us” Project Syndicate (September 14, 2026)
Brian Merchant, “The Luddites Take New York” Blood In The Machine (July 10, 2026
Bruce Michelson, “Mark Twain Legacies in the Dawn of Gen AI” Mark Twain Annual (2024)
Thomas Pettitt, “The Gutenberg Parenthesis: Oral Tradition & Digital Technologies” MIT Media Studies (April 1, 2010)
Matt Seybold, “After OpenAI” The American Vandal Podcast (May 12, 2026)
Matt Seybold et al, “The Facebook Files & The Gutenberg Parenthesis” The American Vandal Podcast (April 1, 2025)
Matt Seybold et al, “Newspapers Worse Than Dead, But Print Is A Rent Strike” The American Vandal Podcast (April 5, 2025)
Matt Seybold et al, “The Gilded Network” The American Vandal Podcast (March 21, 25)
Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Penguin, 2008)
Mark Twain, No 44, The Mysterious Stranger: The Authoritative Text (U. California, 2011)
Raymond Williams, Culture & Society, 1780-1950 (1958)
Daniel Yankelovich, The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict Into Cooperation (Touchtone, 2001)
