What role do clichés play in contemporary culture—especially in an era increasingly shaped by predictive language models like ChatGPT? As language grows ever more formulaic, the cliché demands renewed critical attention. Genre studies has long examined how formula and convention serve cultural, psychological, and ideological functions. Mary Ann Doane, writing on visual clichés in cinema, describes the cliché as “a heavily loaded moment of signification, a social knot of meaning.” Though marked by apparent ease and naturalness, it also “has a binding power so strong that it indicates a precise moment of ideological danger or threat.” For Doane, the cliché’s immediacy of understanding signals its alignment with the status quo, making it a site of ideological conservatism. Yet the word’s etymology—referring to a stereotype printing block—invites us to view the cliché as a kind of technology, a tool for making thought more economical. If mechanical reproduction gave rise to the cliché, how might we reconsider its dangers and potentials in the age of artificial intelligence? 

Possible paper topics include:

– analysis of specific clichés in contemporary culture (e.g., film, television, new media) 

– the relationship between clichés and technology 

– the double-edged relationship between clichés and thought (the ways in which it assists thought by making it economical, the ways in which it blocks off thought)

– the use of clichés in postmodern literature (e.g., John Ashbery)

– clichés as “dead metaphors” (William Empson) and the conditions in which they might be resuscitated

– language and artificial intelligence

For questions, please contact Hannah Kwak at [email protected].