Public Lecture featuring Dr. Nathan Murray

Dr. Nathan Murray holds a PhD in English from the University of Toronto. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and History at Algoma University. Dr. Murray’s research examines the intersection of writing pedagogy and digital technology with a particular focus on the impact of generative AI on academic integrity and assessment. This lecture explores the history of the essay as a form of assessment in universities, in the context of how generative AI now threatens the form’s very existence. Shortly after the public launch of ChatGPT, a number of prominent commentators proclaimed that the essay was dead. Unwittingly, these commentators were joining a long tradition; educators throughout the twenty and twenty-first century wrote epitaphs announcing the genre’s imminent death, although these proclamations have always been premature. Scholarship is littered with evangelists advocating for a replacement to the essay. And yet the format has persisted Dr. Murray intends to ask what value has essay writing produced for students, their instructors and for graduates writing out in the wider world? Is the institution of the college essay worth defending? When GenAI promises to write our essays for us, what comes next?