Beyond economic, ethical, and environmental considerations, new technologies also have an aesthetic impact. In the early 20th century, modernist and avant-garde literature, art, and design often embraced the transformations of sensory experience implied by the rapid development of modern technology. As Sara Danius argued in The Senses of Modernism, “the emergence of modernist aesthetics signifies the increasing internalization of technological matrices of perception.” This transformation was sometimes even perceived by its protagonists in a radical and emancipatory sense – as a reinvention of humanity beyond oppressive traditions and humanist ideals, all starting from a radical transformation of aesthetic experience. It is only on the basis of this technologically induced transformation of lived experience and its material conditions that artistic forms needed to be transcended as well. Hannes Meyer, architect and later the Bauhaus director, wrote in this spirit in 1926: “The art of felt imitation is in the process of being dismantled. Art is becoming invention and controlled reality.” One hundred years later, the emergence of generative AI has been met with a strong humanist reaction, reviving arguments about the exceptional nature of human intelligence and creativity. At the same time, the hyperbolic imagination of its Silicon Valley proponents lacks the avant-garde’s edge and – especially – any emancipatory dimension. This paper will pose the question of whether generative AI has the potential to impact aesthetic experience, and if so, in what sense.

Soviet Georgia was an agrarian country with little industry. Nevertheless, there are industrial novels from the Soviet era that more or less fit within the conventional framework of socialist realism. However, the oeuvre of Rezo Gabriadze (1936–2021) presents a striking contrast. Gabriadze was a writer, screenwriter, and the founder of the Georgian Marionette Theater. In his work, technology plays an unusual role:

In the cult film "The Excentrics" (directed by Eldar Shengelaya, 1973), a flying ox cart is invented, powered by the force of love. The technocratic dystopia "Kin-Dza-Dza!" (1986) depicts a galaxy where art disappears, and language is reduced to a single word. "Ramona" (2013) tells the love story of two locomotives in the post-World War II Soviet Union.

In my presentation, I will explore Gabriadze’s ambivalent and unconventional perspective on technology in the Soviet Georgian context.

Surveillance has been described as a cultural technology of power, drawing on distinctions between surveillance of others and of oneself, or between powerful, top-down surveillance and power-critical, bottom-up ‘sousveillance’ – to name just a few. In my talk, I will use these distinctions to shed light on the role of surveillance in literary theories of narration. The main focus will be the concept of ‘transparence,’ as developed by Dorit Cohn in her 1978 book “Transparent Minds.” According to Cohn, since the late 18th century the instance of the narrator in the novel has increasingly become an expert in penetrating the consciousness of fictional characters, their motives, desires and fears. Thus, “the transparency of fictional minds” is considered as “the touchstone that simultaneously sets fiction apart from reality and builds the semblance of another, non-real reality.” I will revise Cohn’s panorama of narrative techniques and ask to which extent it can be referred to the aforementioned cultural techniques (something that Cohn herself was quite critical about).

This paper aims to discuss the most recent developments in short story cycle theory, introducing potential new investigative methodologies derived from the cross-fertilization between literary theory on polytextual forms and literary empirical studies.

Short story cycle theory gained traction in the 1970s, starting with Forrest Ingram’s seminal studies, and remains a mainstream framework. Around the same time, Maria Corti introduced the concept of the macrotext in Italy. More recently, René Audet’s studies have framed short story cycle theory within the broader category of polytextuality. Building on the latter, I have developed a theory of polytextuality, defining polytextual works as cultural objects generated through artistic processes that articulate meaning by creating, selecting, and combining autonomous artistic pieces. A polytext is a composite work of art consisting of multiple self-contained elements. However, it is also a unified artistic entity, as it follows an authorial, editorial, or curatorial project, is released as an independent work, and is perceived as a cohesive whole. While individual components retain their identity, they contribute to the polytext’s overall meaning-making process, altering their meaning through interaction with the whole.

In contrast to short story cycle theories, polytextual theories emphasize reader-oriented approaches, shifting focus from an author- or text-centered perspective to the role of readers' actions (Audet) and cognitive processes (Santi). However, as De Vooght and Nemegeer argue, while reader-oriented theories attempt to explain how short story collections are interpreted, their claims lack empirical validation. To address this, De Vooght and Nemegeer conducted exploratory studies analyzing real reader responses, revealing a significant gap between literary theory and actual reader behavior. Reading behavior, they found, is shaped by mechanisms of human text processing such as the primacy effect and confirmation bias.

These findings suggest that reader-oriented approaches may not fully capture real readers’ interpretive processes. Nevertheless, existing short story cycle theories remain valuable for textual analysis and for teaching reading and writing techniques. A key goal is to develop methodologies that enhance composition, reading, and analytical outcomes, making them widely applicable since collections are pervasive in education and publishing, spanning media and communication sectors.

To move beyond these preliminary findings, interdisciplinary research is needed, involving experiments on culturally diverse demographics and a multilingual corpus. This paper shares these findings and discusses a research project aimed at establishing an interdisciplinary framework and methodology for short story collections, translating research results into practical guidelines for those working in the field.