Writing Quandaries in the Age of Generative AI:Navigating Human-Machine Configurations in Higher Education

This paper examines how the automation of text generation challenges long-standing ideas about writing in higher education. The capacity of GAI to produce text has primarily sparked debates over academic integrity, student cheating and AI literacies. In this paper, we wish to direct the debate towards how writing practices are being transformed. In higher education, writing has been understood as primarily a human practice central to learning, assessment and knowledge production. While concerns about integrity and accountability are important, the implications of GAI on writing extend further, challenging established understandings of writing as a cognitive and epistemic practice. To better analyze and navigate these transformations, we propose a socio-material framework that considers writing as a dynamic interplay between human, technological and institutional agencies. Engaging research on writing in higher education, we identify four areas where GAI reshapes assumptions about writing: Learning, assessment, knowledge production and socialization. In each, we examine how GAI reconfigures not only writing processes, but also the relationships between students, knowledge, educators, and institutions. By interrogating the shifting roles of writing across these areas, this paper contributes to ongoing debates on the role of technology in knowledge producation and education. Ultimately, we advocate for a reimagined pedagogical framework integrating AI literacy while preserving the core intellectual functions of writing. This includes fostering student engagement with diverse writing practices and equipping them to responsibly navigate different human-machine configurations. <br/>