CALL FOR PAPERS: AI and Literature: Teaching, Research, and Interpretive Frameworks (deadline 31 July 2026)

Edited by Dr Francesca Arnavas (University of Tartu) and Dr Emily Middleton (University of Leeds)

As AI is increasingly influencing academic practice, the field of literary studies faces both unprecedented opportunities and urgent questions. This edited volume offers one of the first book-length treatments to focus exclusively on the intersection of AI and literary studies. Neither celebrating nor resisting AI, the volume maps productive dialogues between two domains often perceived as incompatible, offering scholars practical methods alongside theoretical provocations and reflections.

The volume’s distinctive contribution is not only in asking how AI can enhance the teaching and researching of literature, but also what literature can tell us about AI itself: how literary texts, from Victorian fantasy to contemporary speculative fiction, can serve as cognitive models for understanding how AI influences human attention, creativity, and meaning-making.

The volume is organised in three sections. To avoid discussions of AI becoming quickly outdated as technology evolves, we prioritise research-based chapters and case studies whose findings respond to theoretical, genre-based, and methodological issues that go beyond any specific platform or tool.

Section 1: Teaching Literature with AI

This section seeks chapters that explore practical, critically reflective approaches to teaching literature with AI tools, and/or the impact of AI on teaching. We welcome contributions that engage with specific case studies from undergraduate or postgraduate teaching, and that consider both the benefits and limitations of AI integration in the literature classroom.  Relevant topics include (but are not limited to):

• Comparative approaches to teaching with and without AI tools

• AI and academic integrity in literary studies courses

• Assessment design with and without AI

• AI as a tool for exploring genre, period, or theoretical concepts

• Student reflections on AI-assisted learning

Section 2: Researching Literature with AI

This section seeks chapters that demonstrate how AI tools and methods can enhance literary scholarship. We welcome contributions drawing on computational methods, digital humanities approaches, and critical AI studies. Relevant topics include (but are not limited to):

• AI and corpus analysis of literary texts

• AI in scholarly editing 

• AI and authorship analysis 

• Writing with AI as a scholarly practice

• AI and critical neurodiversity studies in literary contexts

Section 3: Exploring AI Through Literature

This section seeks chapters that reverse the lens: rather than asking what AI can do for literary studies, they ask what literary texts can teach us about AI. Literature offers a unique imaginative laboratory for exploring the cognitive, ethical, and philosophical dimensions of AI. We welcome both expected and unexpected literary case studies - we are as interested in chapters on Victorian texts or children’s literature as in chapters on science fiction.

Relevant topics include (but are not limited to):

• Literary representations of AI, machine cognition, and artificial consciousness

• How narrative techniques illuminate what AI can and cannot replicate of human experience

• AI and empathy, emotion, or affect as explored through literary texts

• Mind wandering, attention, and cognitive processing in literary portrayals of AI

• Posthumanism, the uncanny, and AI in fiction

• Less obvious literary connections to AI (e.g. Gothic fiction, Victorian fantasy, modernist texts)

• AI and questions of creativity, authorship, and originality in literary works

Submission Guidelines

We welcome contributions from scholars at all career stages. Please submit:

• An abstract of 300 words outlining your proposed chapter’s argument, methodology, case study, and contribution to the relevant section. 

• A short biographical note of 100 words.

• Your institutional affiliation and contact details.

Completed chapters will be approximately 5,000 words (including notes and bibliography).

Abstract deadline: 31 July 2026

Notification of acceptance: End of August 2026

Full chapter submission deadline: 15 March 2027

Please send submissions and any queries to:

francesca.arnavas@ut.ee

e.j.l.middleton@leeds.ac.uk