MOSAICS Symposium Schedule

Thursday, October 15, 2026

Paper sessions are 15-minutes long and include 45 minutes of live audience Q&A with the speaker(s). All start and end times are CST.

9:00 a.m. - 9:10 a.m. 

Opening Remarks, Jeffrey Yost, Director, Charles Babbage Institute 

9:10 a.m. - 10:40 a.m. 

Keynote Session I

Moderator: Anita Say Chan

Janet A. Vertesi headshot

Janet Vertesi

Princeton University

""The Project of AI” and its Decoys: Observing a Political Economy in the Making"

Tiara Roxanne headshot

Tiara Roxanne

 HfG - Karlsruhe 

"Automated Extraction at the Borderlands"

Introduced by Jeffrey Yost

Introduced by Sareeta Amrute

 

 

 

10:45 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

Session I: Attention and Resistance 

Moderator: Sareeta Amrute 

“Attention, Alignment and Other Feminist Concerns.” Lauren Klein, Emery University; Derya Akbaba, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden; Miriah Meyer, Linkoping University and Maria Antoniak, University of Colorado, Boulder 

“Computer People for Peace and Useful Histories of Data Backlash.” Mar Hicks, University of Virginia 

"Hard Drives: Trans Engineers, AI, and New Histories of Machine Learning." Cassius Adair, The New School 

 

 

12:45 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.       

Session II: Labor Subversion

Moderator: Gerardo Con Diaz

 “Human Labor Behind AI: From Ghost Workers to Platformized Experts.”  Sayamsiddha, The New School 

“Beyond Bias: Computerized Racecraft and the History of Algorithmic Job-Matching.” Jason Ludwig, University of California, Santa Barbara  

“Platform Parasites: Using AI to Debug Nomadic Extraction.” Hector Beltran, Massachusetts Institute of Technology  

 

 

2:20 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.       

Session III: Narrative Matters

Moderator: Jeffrey Yost

“Making IT Proper: A Critical Pre-History of Artificial Intelligence in the People’s Republic of China.” Bo An, Lingnan University  

“Liquidating Language: Generative AI and the Technical Conditions of Thought.” Pierre Schwarzer, New York University  

"Defiant Protocols: Trust, Reputation, and Controversy in India’s Agentic Finance Landscape." Vinay Brandon, University of Minnesota   

 

 

4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Session IV: Institutional Power 

Moderator: Ekaterina Babintseva

““Delete First, Verify Later”: New Ways of (Ac)counting in Government Databases and Weaponization of Fear." Sananda Sahoo, University of Western Ontario  

“From Administrative Automation to Institutional Stewardship: Reimagining Ai in the Research Office.” Mayank Kejriwal, University of Southern California

"Pretrained: The American University and the Making of AI." Avery Wiscomb, Virginia Tech University; and Steven Gotzler, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 

 

 

 

Friday, October 16, 2026  

Paper sessions are 15-minutes long and include 45 minutes of live audience Q&A with the speaker(s). All start and end times are CST.

9:00 a.m. - 9:05 a.m. 

Opening Remarks, Jeffrey Yost, Director, Charles Babbage Institute

Session V: Public Concerns

Moderator: Anita Chan

“Constituting AI, Re-constituting Society.” Margarita Boenig-Liptsin, ETH, Zurich   

"“People Machines”: AI and the Making of the Public." Fergus Linley-Mota, Simon Fraser University  

"Care Over Code: AI Harms and Collective (In)Justice.” Laine McCrory, New York University  

 

 

10:45 a.m. - 11:45

Session VI: Coded Cognition

Moderator: Ekaterina Babintseva

“The Memory/Intelligence Divide: A Manual/Intellectual, Raced, and Classed Hierarchy.” Yoehan Oh, Yale University   

“Antinomies of Russian Formalism: For and Against the Automation of Language.” Yufei Qi, New York University   

 

 

12:45 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.        

Session VII: Computing and the Body

Moderator: Gerardo Con Diaz

“Faith in Computers: The Making of Voice Biometrics." Juana Calina Becerra Sandoval, Harvard University  

“Simulated Sadness: AI Psychodiagnostics, Synthetic Data, and Disability Politics.” Jeff Nagy and Tiff Regaudie, York University

"From Cybernetics TCM to AI-TCM: How the Medical Expert Systems Paved the Way to Artificial Intelligence in Traditional Chinese Medicine." Hanzhang (John) Ye, University of Minnesota 

 

 

 

2:20 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.

Session VIII: Fallibility and Disagreement

Moderator: Sareeta Amrute

"Subjectivity as a solution to human fallibility: political knowledge, machine learning efficacy, and the reorientation of 1980s artificial intelligence around extra-evidential judging, 1978-1994." Aaron Mendon-Plasek, Purdue University  

“Counting Worlds Otherwise: AI, Data Ontologies, and Colonial Logics in Global Science Fiction Cinema.” Özgür Çalışkan, Anadolu University

“Mapping the AI Debate: Beyond Binary Tribes and Flattened Landscapes.” Ashlee Mirizio and Nathan Ensmenger, Indiana University  

 

 

4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Keynote Session II

Moderator: Ekaterina Babintseva

Paula Chakravartty photo cropped

Paula Chakravartty

New York University  

"Palestine as Paradigm: AI and the Colonial Present"

Roderic N. Crooks headshot

Roderic Nicholaus Crooks

University of California, Irvine

"Access Is Capture: How Edtech Reproduces Racial Inequality"

Introduced by Gerardo Con Diaz

Introduced by Ekaterina Babintseva

 

MOSAICS Policies

The University of Minnesota shall provide equal access to and opportunity in its programs, facilities, and employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, gender, age, marital status, familial status, disability, public assistance status, membership or activity in a local commission created for the purpose of dealing with discrimination, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

MOSAICS is dedicated to providing a harassment-free online symposium experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of symposium participants in any form, including online posting/communication/social media. Symposium participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the symposium at the discretion of the symposium organizers. We are committed to fostering a positive and productive environment for all participants.

This symposium features works in progress. You may not cite, paraphrase, or otherwise share an author's unpublished work or ideas without their consent.