Prof. Wesley Wildman Featured in BU Today for Publishing his First Fiction Novel
The following is an excerpt from BU Today’s article “Wesley Wildman on the Challenges and Joys of Writing Fiction after Work for Academic Audiences” by Steve Holt, featuring Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics Wesley Wildman, published on September 26, 2023.
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The process was at times arduous and refining for an academician whose scholarship centers on how and why humans, as individuals and in groups, make meaning through religion and spirituality and whose work frequently commingles with computational social science and the ethics of new and emerging technologies. (His undergraduate degrees are in mathematics, physics, and computer science.) Last academic year, Wildman’s Data, Society & Ethics class at CDS worked on writing an ethical blueprint for the academic use of artificial intelligence chatbots such as ChatGPT.
In his debut novel, Wildman tackles the problem of suffering through the lens of a fictional family that is enduring a traumatic event. He sat down to write it nine years ago while on sabbatical, with the hope of reaching a wider audience than he does with his headier nonfiction volumes.
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