Dr Brett Zehner

I am a writer and critical theorist. I am currently a Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence and Communications. I joined the Department of Communications, Drama, and Film in the fall of 2024. Before coming to Exeter, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Ohio State University in Comparative Cultural Studies and the Translational Data Analytics Institute. I also hold a PhD from Brown University and an MFA from UC San Diego.

My research focuses on Critical AI Studies from a cultural studies perspective. Since artificial intelligence ties together so many concerns, including racial justice, labor, gendered politics, and environmental futures, my approach is also interdisciplinary but grounded in critical theory. 

My current book project – Capital and White Anxiety – is a monograph theorizing the relationship between whiteness (as a cultural logic of racial capitalism) and the long history of artificial intelligence. I first argue that whiteness is the social a priori to the behavioral dispossession necessary to create artificial intelligence in the early 20th century. I then argue that whiteness insulates itself from social movements and eases economic crises in the mid-20th century by declaring itself the general equivalent of so-called cybernetic economies. I end the book by analyzing the present collapse of white anxiety into far-right extremism and the coming economic crisis of AI model collapse. I argue that these three historical movements of whiteness provide a genealogy of the collapse of the AI model. The hope of this book is to map the shifting grounds for anti-racist and anti-capitalist action against AI realism. 

A commitment to pedagogy ties the threads of my research. As such, my teaching reflects an interdisciplinary approach to digital media, computational ethics, cultural studies, and critical race theory. I have taught courses on culture, art, and technological histories. My teaching style emphasizes critical making, critical theory, philosophy of aesthetics, critical data studies, and digital media analysis by closely reading critical texts, media, case studies, and current events. At Exeter, I am now developing courses to prepare students for a future in, through, and against artificial intelligence.

I am a co-director of the Critical AI Research Center at the University of Exeter. I am also a member of the Transversal Institutional Analysis Network and the Abolitionist Epistemologies Working Group. I am currently collaborating with artists and theorists on an intermedia project called Late Night in Late Capitalism. 

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I welcome PhD research proposals from prospective candidates working on cultural studies approaches to digital culture.

I am specifically interested in critical theoretical approaches to:

Artificial intelligence

Big Data

Digital Culture

Computational Media

Political Theories of the Far Right

Anti-racist approaches to media

Theories of Identity Formation

Queer of Color Critique

Critical Media Practices

Media Theory/History

STS

Guidance for PhD proposals can be found here

b.z.zehner@exeter.ac.uk

Office 1, White House, Thornlea, Exeter, EX4 4LA, UK.