In-person November Annual Meeting 2026 Program Book

This presentation examines the Ghana episode of the docuseries The Art of Theology, which traces how Ghanaian Christianity reclaimed indigenous aesthetics through Adinkra symbols, Kente cloth, and Symbolic Theology. The episode itself raises methodological questions for the digital humanities. To visualize historical moments where no archival footage exists, AI-generated imagery is incorporated , prompting consideration of whether AI has a legitimate place in scholarly storytelling or risks distorting ancestral memory. Additionally, the series lives on YouTube, a platform that challenges conventional academic distribution by making theological inquiry publicly accessible. The presentation argues that AI, deployed transparently, can function as digital iconography, a tool for imagining what written archives cannot hold, and that digital platforms expand rather than diminish scholarly reach. Together, these dimensions model new forms of public humanities practice and invite critical conversation about authority, memory, and the future of religious knowledge in an algorithmically mediated age.

As AI-generated material has continued to increase in quality, speed of production, and integration into daily life, much of the conversation around this material in church has focused on the potential problems of AI as replacement for religious leaders. Though this may be a future concern, the integration of artificial intelligence into church spaces is already underway. During this past Christmas season, a Catholic Church in Durham, North Carolina displayed an AI-generated image of the Nativity scene. In this paper I combine material studies and ethnographic research to understand the significance of such a display for both the generator of the image and the community who encountered it.

I use the example of The AI Bible on Instagram to model an approach that analyzes both religion and AI as disciplinary technologies. First, I survey scholarly approaches to and popular discourses on AI-image generators and biblical texts, highlighting debates over accuracy, evaluations of quality, and an emphasis on autonomy and personalization. I then provide an overview of The AI Bible account on Instagram, analyzing the human/machine collaboration in content creation and the affordances of the AI models and algorithm-driven platforms. Finally, I explore concepts of content collapse and platform governance in order to highlight the ways in which hyperconnectivity disciplines us. The AI Bible shows how the myth industry is shaped by the logics of platform capitalism—templated creativity, attention economies, and circulation governed by opaque, proprietary algorithms.

This study compares how viewers emotionally and analytically engage with biblical art of human origin versus art generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Using a single-blind focus group protocol and crossover design, we presented participants with human and AI-generated biblical scenes, subsequently subjecting the transcripts to sentiment and qualitative analysis. We found that AI art often achieves immediate and stronger emotional spikes due to its dehistoricized and optimized aesthetics. However, this impact is limited; while AI-generated imagery privileges affective immediacy, it frequently results in an interpretive plateau where viewers struggle to synthesize symbols into coherent narratives. Conversely, human-authored art, though initially less accessible, reveals increasing depth over time. We argue that while AI simulates the affect of the sacred, it lacks the generative capacity for sustained narrative and symbolic intentionality. This suggests that AI religious art flattens the sacred into atmosphere, swapping historical and symbolic depth for immediate, convenient affect.

The communicative culture created by generative AI has produced several problematic digital byproducts, identified as "AI slop"—low-quality, data- and image-based content—and “brainrot”—nonsensical or chaotic AI-generated content. Concerns have been raised about how these mutated images and video clips present false narratives and representations of reality that influence human perceptions of truth. However, what if this created content represented more than just digital noise or problematic deep fakes? What if the fragmented images created by AI GPTs’ literalist interpretations of user prompts pointed to new ways of understanding human-machine relationships and meaning-making?  This presentation reframes current concerns about AI slop and brainrot beyond alarmist “moral panic.” It suggests that these transgressive AI media forms represent a “Theater of the Absurd” that mirrors contemporary existential uncertainty about our emerging technoculture. The paper explores how AI platforms and image-based content contribute to a new aesthetics of belief through the case studies of “Shrimp Jesus,” “Exploding Exorcism,” and Italian brainrot characters such as Tung Tung Sahur, I examine how AI slop and brainrot offer unexpected sites for the exploration of new religious imaginaries about the spirituality of emerging AI culture.