AI, Writing, and Creativity: The imagination in the Digital Age

In this course we will explore how AI systems—large language models—are transforming creative expression. Through collaborative inquiry, students will examine fundamental questions about imagination, authorship, and human creativity while developing rhetorical awareness. This course will ask students to understand AI not as a culturally neutral technology but as one shaped by — and reshaping — American institutions, values, and inequalities. We'll investigate AI as a socially relevant contemporary issue, considering questions of equity, agency, and community in digital writing spaces. Students will write for diverse audiences, engage with interdisciplinary perspectives on technology and creativity, and view their own linguistic and creative differences as assets. Ultimately, we'll use writing to deepen our thinking about what it means to create in an AI-influenced world. (Not open to students who have already taken FYSE 1124.)