Tampere Insitute for Advanced Studies

Open Colloquium “Human–Non-human”

Time: Wednesday, 8 October 2025, at 13:30-17:00

Place: Tampere University, City Centre Campus, Main Building, Café Toivo & Aula, 2nd floor

Abstract

The talk traces how Romantic anxieties about the mechanisation of thinking and industrial revolution evolved into dystopias of machine uprising. Achim von Arnim’s Gräfin Dolores (1810) already imagines humans threatened by soulless automata, while Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) reworks myth of the golem to depict a human-made being turning against its creator. Samuel Butler’s “Darwin among the Machines” (1863) later framed this as the displacement of humanity by a machine race. Such nineteenth-century dystopias anticipate current debates on rogue AI and automation-driven unemployment, echoing the industrial revolution’s anxieties while illuminating today’s cultural fears of technological supremacy.

University of Tallinn, Estonia

29. August 2025, 11:00–12:30

This hands-on workshop introduces the basic principles of geoparsing – the process of identifying and interpreting place references in textual sources. Through practical exercises and group discussion, participants will learn how spatial information embedded in historical and literary texts can be extracted, visualised and analysed to support new kinds of research questions. No prior programming skills are required. By the end of the session, participants will have experimented with accessible tools to explore how texts can be transformed into maps, and how spatial approaches can enrich cultural and historical analysis.

University of Tallinn, Estonia

28. August 2025, 9:30–10:30

Geoparsing refers to the extraction of spatial information from unstructured text, typically through the identification and disambiguation of place names. This process enables the conversion of texts into maps. In the context of cultural heritage, geoparsing offers new avenues for cultural-historical research and the study of spatial history. Where are the centres and peripheries of a textual corpus?

In this lecture, I introduce the basic principles of geoparsing technology and demonstrate its practical application in cultural-historical research through two case studies. The first draws on my project Romantic Cartographies: Lived and Imagined Space in English and German Romantic Texts, 1790–1840, which investigated spatial constructions in early nineteenth-century German- and English-language Romantic literature, using materials from the digital archive European Literature, 1790–1840: The Corvey Collection. The second example comes from the project Atlas of Finnish Literature, 1870–1940 mapping place names mentioned in Finnish-language fiction from that period.

My paper explores how the Romantic rebellion against the creator was transformed into the idea of a rebellion of machines. Samuel Butler’s “Darwin among the Machines” (1863) is considered the first text to introduce the idea of a machine race displacing humans. However, a similar fear was also expressed during the Romantic period. In Gräfin Dolores (1810) by Achim von Arnim, the Count Karl feels anxious after encountering automata of a mysterious doctor: “Still, he was tormented by the feeling of being completely alien and alone in the power of soulless machines, which, created by humans, could easily gain supremacy over him.” (Werke I, p. 404; my translation.) While Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) does not address the AI takeover as we understand it today, it does explore the idea of a human-created entity rebelling against its creator. In this case, the entity is not a machine but the Creature, an assemblage of body parts brought to life through unspecified scientific means. Shelley’s novel can be read as a reinterpretation of Milton’s Satan or the golem myth, but it also refers to the myth of Prometheus, popular in German Romanticism. Both Goethe and Friedrich Schlegel refer to Promethean efforts to manufacture a race of artificial humans who despise God. What historical process led to Roy the replicant (mis)quoting William Blake’s America a Prophecy (1793) in Blade Runner (1982)? Blake’s character Orc is the embodiment of rebellion against Urizen, but Ridley Scott’s film is about the rebellion of machines against humanity.

Friedrich Schlegel’s concept of irony emphasises self-awareness and self-reflexivity, allowing the work of art to create and question its own rules. Much like Kant’s transcendental knowledge, Schlegel’s formulation of art generates its own poetical rules from within, underscoring an autonomous quality.

Asko Nivala: “Romantic Irony: Transcendental Reflection of Artistic Form”, an invited presentation at Romantic Irony symposium. The University of the Arts, Helsinki, Finland, 12 December 2023.

Asko Nivala: “Romantic Database. The Zettelkasten and Commonplace Book as Literary Media”, conference paper at Romanticism and its Media. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Englische Romantik -conference. University of Leipzig, Germany, 5.–8. October 2023.

Harri Kiiskinen, Asko Nivala, Jasmine Westerlund & Juhana Saarelainen: “Extracting Geographical References from Finnish Literature. Fully Automated Processing of Plain-Text Corpora.” CCLS 2023 Würzburg – 2nd Annual Conference of Computational Literary Studies.

Abstract

In the Atlas of Finnish Literature 1870–1940 project, we extract geographical information from a Finnish-language corpus of literary texts published between 1870 and 1940. The texts are transformed from plain texts to TEI/XML, and further processed with named entity recognition and linking tools. The results are presented in web-based environment. This article describes the technical structure of the analysis chain, the tools used and the metaprocesses used to manage the research dataset.

The Pleasures of Imagination – Art, Architecture and Aesthetics in 18th Century Europe

The Finnish Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference Helsinki and on Zoom 21–22 October 2021.

Aalto university, Runeberginkatu 14–16 entrance A, 3rd floor.

My paper “Cityscapes and Landscapes in British and German Romanticism (1790–1840)” will be held on 22 October 2021 at 14.30.

Caspar David Friedrich: Wiesen bei Greifswald (1821/1822). Wikimedia Commons.

Unknown Tongues is a symposium on Romanticism’s minor and marginal languages. On 24 September 2021, invited leading scholars will gather online to debate and discuss what a closer study of (trans)national Romanticisms through their languages can bring to Romantic and nineteenth-century studies, and what relevance a recovery of these traditions may have for our sense of the present.

Organised by Brecht de Groote (Universiteit Gent ⬨ University of Ghent) and Rhys Kaminski-Jones (Prifysgol Cymru y Drindod Dewi Sant ⬨ University of Wales Trinity Saint David).