Rhetoric, AI, and Learning Futures

Guest Lecture and Course with Dr. Nana Ariel (Tel Aviv University, Israel) in October

Eine Gruppe von Erwachsenen sitzt im Austausch vertieft zusammen.

At the Institute of Rhetoric, we are actively engaging with the future of our discipline and the university in light of technological developments in artificial intelligence – through projects such as the RHET AI Center and Jugend präsentiert, but increasingly also within the department and our seminars themselves. A new series entitled “Rhetoric, AI, and Learning Futures” reflects this and will bring excellent researchers to Tübingen over the coming months to offer lectures and workshops for educators and students.

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Nana Ariel to Tübingen in early October as the second guest in this series. She is an author, researcher, educator, and publisher. She teaches at the Faculty of Humanities Tel Aviv University and has been a guest lecturer and speaker at various international institutions, including Harvard University, Sciences Po, Paris, and UC Berkeley. Her interests lie in rhetoric from antiquity to the present, learning, the material culture of books, and critical AI. She explores and develops new methods of learning, teaching, and exchanging knowledge, particularly at the intersections of theory and practice. Her most recent book is Clichés We Live By: from Modernity to AI, co-authored with Dana Riesenfeld (Oxford U P, 2026).

As part of her visit, Nana Ariel will lead a block seminar for undergraduate and graduate students on October 1–2, 2026, from 9:00–17:00 each day: “Machine Talk: What AI Reveals about Conversation” examines conversation as a genre and explores how conversational AI builds upon and transforms it. The seminar covers everything from early conversational machines to today’s chatbots; participants will read both conversation theories and literary texts to develop a more reflective approach to speaking with AI. On October 6, 2026, at 18:15, she will deliver a public lecture “A Bug or a Feature? Clichés and the Future of Writing with AI,” which will explore the history of the cliché from ancient rhetoric to generative AI—and address the question of whether the cliché is a flaw in machine-generated language or a fundamental feature of language use itself, with all that this implies for the teaching of writing.

Lecture in the Institute Colloquium
Seminar (3 ECTS)

Lecture in the Institute Colloquium

A Bug or a Feature? Clichés and the Future of Writing with AI

06.10.2026 | 18:15 | Room 119, Brechtbau (Wilhelmstr. 50)

Generative AI has revived longstanding anxieties about clichéd language and the loss of originality. Tracing the history of the cliché from ancient rhetoric to generative AI, Dr. Ariel will ask whether cliché is a failure of machine-generated language or a fundamental feature of language use, and explore what this question means for the future of writing pedagogy.

Abstract

Is AI responsible for the homogenization of human language? Since the public launch of large language models, one of the most common concerns has been their tendency to produce clichés. Even as models improve and become more sophisticated, clichés persist, while generic formulations associated with AI increasingly creep back into human writing. Are clichés a mechanical extreme of language, a bug to be corrected as AI improves, or are they fundamental to humanlike language and therefore inescapable in AI as well?
This talk approaches these questions through the cultural history of the cliché, from its prehistory in ancient rhetorical topoi to the nineteenth-century invention of the printing cliché, the modern campaign against clichéd writing, and contemporary AI cliché-hunting. This history reveals how closely the rejection of cliché is bound up with the modern obsession with originality.
Drawing on a countertradition that sees clichés as an essential feature of language and communication, the talk finally considers what writing might look like beyond the modern demand for originality. Is it even possible for educators today to imagine writing no longer governed by this ideal? And what kind of pedagogy for writing with AI might emerge from reconsidering ancient practices of imitation and repetition in the age of generative AI?

Seminar (3 ECTS)

Machine Talk: What AI Reveals about Conversation

1. and 2.10.2026 | 9:00-17:00 each day | Room 119, Brechtbau (Wilhelmstr. 50)

This short seminar explores conversation as a genre and asks how conversational AI draws on it and reshapes it. We will trace a line from the early history of conversational machines to today's chatbots. Reading theories of conversation alongside literary works, we will consider how dialogue works between humans and machines and develop more reflective ways of talking with AI.

Successful completion of the seminar earns 3 ECTS credits.
Registration: Please email seminar-orga@rhetorik.uni-tuebingen.de with your name and degree program.

Abstract

People mostly meet AI by talking to it, and talking to a chatbot involves far more than writing a good prompt. Conversations with AI range from exchanges for practical assistance to companionship, therapy, and literary experimentation. This short seminar explores conversation as a rhetorical genre, with its own structures, sub-genres, conventions, and clichés, and asks how AI draws on that genre and reshapes it, borrowing the cues of human talk while developing patterns of its own. We will trace the historical roots of conversational AI and follow them into contemporary chatbots. Reading conversation theory and philosophy alongside literary works, we will explore dialogues with machines, attentive to aspects such as turn-taking, misunderstanding, and repair. We will treat conversation as the constant management of potential breakdown, where moments of failure are often most revealing. In hands-on sessions, we will assess different forms of machine dialogue and ask what these exchanges reveal about how conversation works and how they might help shape more reflective interactions with machines.

Past Events

Guest Lecture and Course with Dr. Christopher Basgier (Auburn University, USA) in July

Lecture in the Institute Colloquium

The History and Future of US Writing Instruction Across the Curriculum

[Translate to English:] Plakat zum Vortrag

28.07.2026 | 18:15 | Room 119, Brechtbau (Wilhelmstr. 50)

The lecture traces the development of academic writing instruction in the US—from classical rhetorical education and the expansion of access to higher education in the 20th century to the current challenges posed by generative AI. Using examples from Auburn University, Dr. Basgier will discuss how rhetorical perspectives on writing can open up new approaches to critical thinking, ethics, and scientific knowledge.

Abstract

In the United States, higher education institutions have developed complex infrastructures for teaching and supporting academic writing. Most first-year undergraduate students take a required writing course that introduces rhetorical conventions and processes of academic writing. Some institutions extend writing instruction beyond the first year via discipline-specific writing courses and professional development in writing pedagogy for faculty in all fields. A majority of US universities also have a writing center, where students can get one-on-one extracurricular tutoring from trained peers who help them respond to writing assignments and rhetorical situations. Furthermore, an entire academic discipline—rhetoric, composition, and writing studies—conducts scholarly inquiry into the teaching, learning, and study of writing. In this talk, Dr. Christopher Basgier will discuss how this complex ecosystem of writing instruction, support, and research came to be, as well as its near future, through the lens of three moments when changing literacy demands reshaped writing instruction: the shift from the classical (heavily rhetorical) curriculum to the modern research university in the late 1800s; expanded access and the revival of rhetoric in the 1960s and 70s; and the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (genAI), which challenges existing assumptions about writing instruction. Using professional development programs at Auburn University as illustrations, he will argue that rhetorical ways of thinking about writing can help faculty across the disciplines reimagine the relationships among writing, critical thinking, ethics, and inquiry.

Seminar (3 ECTS)

Writing and GenAI: Myths and Realities

29. and 30.07.2026 | 9:00-17:00 each day | Room 119, Brechtbau (Wilhelmstr. 50)

This seminar examines common assumptions and misconceptions about writing and generative AI. Drawing on approaches from rhetoric and writing studies, participants will reflect on writing as a social and knowledge-building practice, as well as on how to engage with AI technologies in their studies, professional lives, and everyday life. In addition to discussing scholarly texts, participants will also develop their own practical stance on the use of AI in academic writing.

Successful completion of the seminar earns 3 ECTS credits.
Registration: Please email seminar-orgaspam prevention@rhetorik.uni-tuebingen.de with your name and degree program.

Abstract

Many common myths about writing are intensifying and changing in the wake of generative artificial intelligence (genAI). For example, writing is often treated as a transparent carrier of meaning, an assumption that may seem plausible when a large language model (LLM) appears to “understand” a prompt. However, the fields of rhetoric and writing studies see it differently: writing is a social, rhetorical, and knowledge-making activity (and not just an automatable process). At the same time, the technology has introduced new myths, including the idea that LLMs “think” like humans. In this short course, we will examine such myths, discuss more productive ways of understanding writing in the age of genAI, and consider how rhetorical concepts can help us respond critically to the technology as writers. Students will analyze academic essays about writing and genAI, reflect on their own practices as writers, and write a provisional, personal ethics statement about genAI use in academic writing, the professional world, and life.