Date of Award

2026-05-01

Degree Name

PhD Education for Social Justice

Dissertation Committee

Suzanne Stolz, EdD Zulema Reynoso, PhD

Keywords

neomythism, affective cybernetics, AI art, generative AI, mythology, (re)enchantment, queer art, posthumanism, human-AI interaction, computational creativity, hyperstition, glitch

Abstract

This qualitative inquiry with arts-based analytic dimensions introduces Neomythism—the reactivation of mythic possibility through human-AI collaborative art-making—as a framework for addressing the compounded epistemic exclusion of marginalized creative practitioners, enforced by a myth of disenchantment that operates at civilizational, institutional, and interpersonal scales. Through semi-structured interviews, artifact analysis, and creative reflection with eight queer and women-identifying AI artists, this research investigates how marginalized practitioners engage generative AI not as neutral tool but as a technology that accelerates possibility through what I term Transfigurative Invocation: the hyperstitional practice whereby desire becomes prompt, prompt becomes artifact that reconstellates collective memory, and in this recursive movement, the practitioner constructs new knowledge of self and world—opening space for possibilities that were previously foreclosed. Findings reveal five interrelated practices—mythic re-visioning, worldbuilding, queer identity exploration, machinic collaboration, and platform resistance—through which participants achieved therapeutic benefit, creative empowerment, and expanded senses of self and possibility. Against reductive critiques that dismiss AI art as theft, skill-avoidance, or creative fraud, this study demonstrates that what emerges in human-AI creative encounter constitutes legitimate, transformative, and profoundly human practice—one that actively resists the delegitimizing forces that produced their exclusion. The central theoretical contribution emerging from this study is the framework of Neomythism itself. This dissertation surfaces three key understandings. First, Transfigurative Invocation brings into focus the recursive mechanism through which practitioners construct meaning and are transformed by what they create. In addition, this study highlights the generative wisdom these practitioners develop—navigating risks while cultivating practices that produce genuine experiences of wonder, identity transformation, and meaning-making. This framework offers theoretical and conceptual vocabulary for fields such as education, art history, psychology, and philosophy of technology.

Document Type

Dissertation: Open Access

Department

Learning and Teaching

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Available for download on Friday, April 28, 2028

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