Graduate Faculty Summer Stipend for Curricular Innovation: Annette Vee

Annette Vee

I met with Annette Vee, associate professor of English and the director of the Composition Program, to discuss how she was going to use the Humanities Engage Curricular Development Funds she received to develop the course “Automated Writing from Amanuenses to AI” this summer.  She wants her students to understand how computation can interact with language and the limits and possibilities of it.

We first talked about how she is adding digital or public humanities content to her course.

Annette Vee responded that she’s “excited and nervous about integrating computational media at the graduate level.” She has taught computational media at the graduate level before (EngLit 2850), but having language generation part as a central focus is new. Since the course is focused on writing specifically, she is taking time this summer to learn about the generation of text so she and her students can play on their own in her course.

She said there are so many automated systems developed from machine learning to produce text that sounds human. Journalism already uses automated systems for things like financial reports and sports scores that are standard genres with templates.

Twitter bots can produce incendiary or promotional content, “generating writing from evil to ok…. Automated systems can be used by Russian bots to undermine our political system but also by creative writers to do fun, interesting things.” 

Dr. Vee regularly teaches students, both in the English department and beyond, who are interested in digital humanities, mostly through the Digital Studies and Methods (DSAM) certificate program, but said “public humanities is newer” for her. Since she trained as a K-12 teacher, she said “pedagogy is central to what I do.” In her course, graduate students will think about how to design units for high school students and undergrads. 

She ended by pointing out that the “important thing about public humanities and going out to communities is asking if [the project] is benefitting the community or is it just benefitting Pitt?”

Asked what she was most excited for students to gain from her course, Dr. Vee responded: “I’m excited for them to have fun playing around with the computational parts and generating language.” Some people think AI will be writing books, but she said, “no one who studies AI thinks that.” This kind of knowledge allows for alternative outcomes for PhDs, such as working for Google. Vee said: “I think it would be better if more humanities people were involved in tech.”

We concluded by talking about the Humanities Engage project overall. Dr. Vee likes “that Humanities Engage is prompting us to rethinking what graduate education is, not just reproduce it. The job market demands it.” Humanities Engage is useful prompting for tenure track R1 faculty to not stay in their own ruts.

Check back in August to hear from Dr. Vee about how her course planning went and to see a copy of her syllabus.  The course is planned to be offered in Fall 2021.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Michele Krugh, PhD 
Project Coordinator, Humanities Engage 

April 6, 2020

Learn about all the Graduate Faculty Summer Stipend for Curricular Innovation awards and Dr. Vee's curricular development experience.