[Jennifer Stoever]

Call for Proposals
Hate and NonHuman Listening
A Guest Series for Sounding Out! guest edited by Kathryn Huether
Submission Deadline: Monday, July 14, 2025, by 11:59pm PDT

Please send a proposed title and 300–350 word abstract to: kathryn.huether@gmail.com
Final pieces should be ~1200 words. Four will be selected for publication.

We invite submissions for a guest series on Hate and NonHuman Listening, which critically examines how artificial intelligence and algorithmic systems are increasingly tasked with listening to, moderating, and at times amplifying hate—whether through speech, sound, or silence.

This series begins with Todd Presner’s Ethics of the Algorithm (2024), which asks what it means to use algorithms ethically. We expand that question to consider how algorithms listen—especially when asked to interpret, flag, or police harmful content. What happens when the complexities of human hate, trauma, and protest are processed through systems which were not designed to understand them? And what are the consequences when such systems fail?

From hate speech moderation on social platforms to surveillance technologies deployed under the guise of safety, AI now plays a defining role in deciding which voices are heard, which are silenced, and which are misheard altogether. Dr. Saadia Gabriel’s research shows how AI often misflags nonstandard English, AAVE, and protest language as harmful—while overlooking overt hate speech. Similarly, Tonia Sutherland’s Resurrecting the Black Body (2023) foregrounds the archival and technological violence that structures digital afterlives, asking how systems listen to (or erase) Black life and death.

We invite critical essays (~1200 words) that explore the entanglements of hate and NonHuman listening.

Topics might include:
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