Archive Fever & AI

Archive Fever & AI

A convening on generative AI, archival practice, and found text

Archives built the large language models that are now reshaping how the past gets read, and generative AI is in turn changing how archives themselves get built, accessed, and used.

This one-day convening brings together scholars, artists, poets, and archivists working at the intersection of generative AI and archival humanities to ask: who builds the infrastructure, who controls access, what's preserved, and what gets lost or irrevocably altered in the process?

The day includes two moderated panel sessions and closes with a live sound performance by artist Victoria Keddie, built from archival and transmission-based material.

Schedule — Saturday, November 7, 2026

9:30–9:45 am — Welcome and announcements

9:45 am–12:15 pm — Session 1, The Archive Under Pressure

1:45–4:15 pm — Session 2, Found Text as Method

4:15–4:30 pm — Break

4:30–5:30 pm — Sound performance, Victoria Keddie

Session 1 — The Archive Under Pressure

Tom Lippincott, Richard Marciano, Maria Antoniak, and George Oates on the methodological and ethical stakes of applying machine learning to historical collections — what's gained, what's lost, and who decides. Moderated by Kyle Stine.

Session 2 — Found Text as Method

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Eryk Salvaggio, Mark Shepard, and Victoria Keddie on using AI tools to surface archival and found voices rather than replace them — work that treats the machine's output, and its noise, as raw material for creation and investigation. Moderated by Liz Flyntz.

Participants

Maria Antoniak — Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram — English, University of Maryland

Victoria Keddie — Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania

Tom Lippincott — Center for Digital Humanities, Johns Hopkins University

Richard Marciano — College of Information, University of Maryland

George Oates — Deep Keep / Flickr.org

Eryk Salvaggio — Cambridge Digital Humanities, University of Cambridge

Mark Shepard — Architecture and Media Study, University at Buffalo

Location

Parkway Theatre
5 West North Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21201

Hosted by the Film and Media Studies Program, Johns Hopkins University
Funded by the JHU Sesquicentennial Awards Program, Envisioning the Future Award