Season 7, Episode 2: Are We History? Historians in the Age of AI – Part II

In this episode of Reverb Effect, we look at the ways in which graduate students and faculty in the humanities have been responding to the rise of AI. Last year, the University of Michigan’s history department put on workshops to begin discussing the impact of AI on teaching and learning and these first two episodes of the new season of the podcast seek to follow up on those conversations. In this episode we had a chance to talk to multiple graduate students and faculty to get a sense for some of the challenges they have encountered in the classroom, how they have reworked their approaches to teaching, and whether or not they think there is a place for generative AI in the practice of studying history. This episode also features a discussion with professor Joy Rohde, whose upcoming book People of the Machine provides some historical context for many of today’s current questions and concerns surrounding AI.

In this episode of Reverb Effect, we look at the ways in which graduate students and faculty in the humanities have been responding to the rise of AI. Last year, the University of Michigan’s history department put on workshops to begin discussing the impact of AI on teaching and learning and these first two episodes of the new season of the podcast seek to follow up on those conversations. In this episode we had a chance to talk to multiple graduate students and faculty to get a sense for some of the challenges they have encountered in the classroom, how they have reworked their approaches to teaching, and whether or not they think there is a place for generative AI in the practice of studying history. This episode also features a discussion with professor Joy Rohde, whose upcoming book People of the Machine provides some historical context for many of today’s current questions and concerns surrounding AI.

David Mori is a PhD candidate in the history program at the University of Michigan whose research examines the intersections of Asian American history, activism, and the rise of policing and mass incarceration in the United States. He has conducted research for the Carceral State Project and is currently a researcher for the Bentley Historical Library’s Shared Stewardship project, where he works to connect historical archives with local communities.

Eliza McKinney is an artist and historian. They are currently a PhD student at the University of Michigan.

Shireen Guru is a fourth year doctoral candidate in the History and Women’s and Gender Studies program. Her research interests include women of color organizing, social networks, and friendship. In the real world, she enjoys drawing innocent bystanders in the department into conversation and hanging out with her cat.

Christopher DeCou is historian of science and technology in late imperial and modern China who completed his dissertation in the History Department at the University of Michigan in 2026. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen Germany.

Eric Toups is an assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan whose work covers North American Indigenous history, environmental history, and colonial American history. He received his undergraduate degree at Louisiana State University, an MA at the University of Maine, and a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Valerie Kivelson is Thomas N. Tentler Distinguished University Professor and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History, and is currently serving as Director of Undergraduate Studies for the History Department. She specializes in the history of Early Modern Russia, Siberia, and Ukraine.

John Carson is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Michigan, and Interim Director of the Program in Science, Technology & Society. He is the author of The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750-1940 (Princeton University Press, 2007).

Brian Porter-Szucs is the Copernicus Professor of Polish Studies and a Thurnau Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He teaches courses dealing with economic history, socialism, Catholicism, and the history of modern Poland. His most recent book is Commodified Communism: Socialist Values and Capitalist Prices in the Polish People’s Republic (Oxford University Press, 2027).

Joy Rohde is a historian of science and technology, and an associate professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. She is the author of People of the Machine: Computers and Human Reason in the Cold War (University of Chicago Press, 2027) and Armed with Expertise: The Militarization of American Social Research during the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2013).

Production Credits

Episode Producers: David Mori

Season Producer: David Mori

Executive Producer: Joseph W. Ho

Editorial Board: Stephen Berrey, Elizabeth Collins, Joseph W. Ho

Music: David Mori

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