Lauren M.E. Goodlad is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. She will present the talk "We Have Always Been Action Theorists: Toward a Critical Theory of Language in an Age of Generative AI." 

At a time of rising autocracy that under-regulated tech monopolies have helped usher in, teachers and students of language and writing can engage generative AI technologies from a standpoint of action—without unnecessary technodeterminism, catastrophism, or passivity. As theorists of action they can nimbly address the primacy of language and the social challenges of AI by recognizing the intersubjective and embodied actions through which people start something new in the world.