The following books have been shortlisted for the British Society for Literature and Science prize for the best book in the field of literature and science published in 2009:

Reviews of a number of these books are currently available on the reviews pages of this website. The prize itself will be announced at the BSLS conference in April.

Call for papers
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews Poetries and sciences in the 21st Century”

This is to invite proposals for contributions to a themed issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews on the topic of “Poetries and sciences in the 21st Century”, to be published as volume 37, number 2, June 2012.

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Call for papers

International Interdisciplinary Conference, 17-18 February 2011

Centre for the History of Medicine and Disease, Durham University, UK

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 31 July 2010

This conference will discuss the history of the relationship between aesthetics and medical understandings of the body. Today’s vogue for neurological accounts of artistic emotions has a long pedigree. Since G.S. Rousseau’s pioneering work underlined the importance of models of the nervous system in eighteenth-century aesthetics, the examination of physiological explanations in aesthetics has become a highly productive field of interdisciplinary research. Drawing on this background, the conference aims to illuminate the influence that different medical models of physiology and the nervous system have had on theories of aesthetic experience. How have aesthetic concepts (for instance, imagination or genius) be grounded medically? What effect did the shift from animal spirits to modern neurophysiology have on aesthetics?

This interdisciplinary conference brings together scholars working in a wide range of fields, including not only the history of medicine but also in subjects such as art history, languages and musicology.

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There are about three weeks left before the deadline for the NEH Summer Institute to be held at Mystic Seaport (CT, USA) this summer, 21 June to 30 July 2010.

Entitled “The American Maritime People,” the institute will pay $4,500 to each participant to defray expenses; there are places available for faculty and graduate students alike.

Please refer to the institute website for information on the program, participant eligibility and the application process.

Call for papers

School of History, University of Liverpool, 17 -18 June 2010

Since the publication of Paul Boyer’s seminal study By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age in 1985, the examination of nuclear culture has mainly been conducted within the context of the United States. In spite of the fact that nuclear culture in Britain was, and still is, pervasive and powerful, scholars have largely neglected the topic, and it remains unclear how the term ‘nuclear culture’ should be understood.

‘British Nuclear Culture: Themes, Approaches and Perspectives’ sets out firstly to investigate the unique nature of nuclear culture in twentieth century Britain and, secondly, to rethink the conceptualisation of nuclear culture more generally. We are seeking to explore the impact nuclear culture had on British society, and the ways in which the scientific community, political decision-makers, consumerism, works of popular science, literature, journalism and film combined to create an identifiable nuclear culture. Also, because established studies have focused predominantly on the socio-cultural and political implications of nuclear energy and weapons, our conference aims to move towards a broader conceptualisation of nuclear culture in general.

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On Wednesday February 3rd the Whipple Museum will hold a special concert to celebrate the works of astronomer and musician William Herschel and his sister, astronomer and singer Caroline Herschel.

It will feature performances of William Herschel’s oboe concerto in Eb and two trio sonatas for harpsichord and strings, as well as an introductory talk from Herschel scholar Michael Hoskin and a reading from Kelley Swain’s new novel-in-progress about Caroline Herschel.

All are welcome!

Whipple Museum, Wednesday February 3rd 2010, 6-9pm
Tickets are free but must be reserved via HPS reception (01223 330906).

Call for papers

CRASSH, University of Cambridge

This interdisciplinary conference concentrates on the correlation between science and art/design, and the impact of the arts and artistic practices on scientific culture. The scientific focus of the conference is molecular biology, in particular structural biology. As any other micro- and nano-scale science, this research is inherently dependent upon visualising objects and data in the production and communication of scientific knowledge. Visualisation is thus an integral part of the understanding and evolution of new scientific concepts and boundaries.

Interdisciplinary collaboration in visualising molecular structures lies at the very core of contemporary research processes and products. Bringing art, design and science together is far more than just an interesting experiment in transdisciplinary cross-communication, it is a necessary step in exploring new ways of optimising imagery at the molecular level and thus breaking new ground.

We welcome submissions for presentations broadly within visualisation of science. Please submit abstract of no more than 250 words, a brief CV and a few lines on your interest in this conference by email to rsk@mrc-mbu.cam.ac.uk before 1 February 2010. For registration and submission of abstract please use the relevant form on our conference website.

Speakers will be notified two weeks after submission deadline. Please be aware that the number of places is limited. Registration and payment must be completed by 11 March 2010.

Department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Cambridge

This one day workshop, aimed particularly at postgraduates and early career
researchers, introduces and explores historiographical and methodological
issues unique to the history of alchemy and chemistry. We will investigate
the practical challenges of researching chemistry over different periods,
from pre-modern matter theories and artisanal practices, to the shaping of
chemistry as a formal discipline in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, and the increasing permeability of chemistry’s boundaries with
other disciplines, including physics and the biosciences, in modern times.
Participation is welcomed both from scholars already working on related
topics, and those interested in exploring points of intersection between
the history of chemistry and their own research.

Discussion will be framed by presentations from junior and established
scholars, including:

  • Hasok Chang (University College London), ‘Why has chemistry become
    unfashionable for historians of science?’
  • Jennifer Rampling (University of Cambridge), ‘Interpreting alchemy: text,
    image, and practice.’
  • Karin Ekholm (Indiana University, Bloomington), ‘Some problems in the
    history of seventeenth-century chemistry.’
  • John Perkins (Oxford Brookes University), ‘Searching for chemists in
    eighteenth-century France.’
  • Pieter Thyssen (Catholic University of Leuven), ‘The Replication Method in
    the history of chemistry: resolving a nineteenth-century priority dispute.’
  • Viviane Quirke (Oxford Brookes University), ‘Chemistry, the pharmaceutical
    industry, and medicine in the twentieth century: drugs as “boundary
    objects.”‘

Lunch is provided. There is no charge for attendance, but registration is
required. Assistance is available towards the cost of travel and
accommodation. Please email Jennifer Rampling for further
details, and to register.

Sponsored by the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC).
For more information on SHAC, including details of the Society’s award
scheme for junior scholars, see www.ambix.org.

The workshop immediately follows the BSHS Postgraduate Conference in
Cambridge (5-7 January).

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Conference Review

Beyond Two Cultures, King’s College London, December 11th, 2009

This stimulating one-day conference at King’s marked the fiftieth anniversary of C. P. Snow’s Rede lecture on the ‘two cultures’ in 1959. Incorporating three panels with participants from a broad range of disciplines was both ambitious and commendable. The conference aimed to look ‘beyond’ the nature of Snow’s original distinction and explore manifestations of the current relationship between science and the arts in the twenty-first century.

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REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!

Nature and the long nineteenth century is a one-day interdisciplinary postgraduate conference exploring intersections of the natural world with nineteenth-century literature and culture.

University of Edinburgh, Saturday, 6 February 2010.

Keynote speakers:

Dr Martin Willis, University of Glamorgan, Dr Christine Ferguson, University of Glasgow, Professor Nick Daly, University College Dublin

In the twenty-first century, environmentalism and the impacts of climate change form a nexus of intense debates about relationship between human culture and the natural world. However, the centrality of the natural world to the nineteenth century imagination has long been acknowledged by scholars, way-marked by Lynn Merrill’s The Romance of Victorian Natural History (1989) for example, while Mike Davis’s Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World (2002) demonstrates the relevance of nineteenth-century research to the modern world.

This conference probes the significance of nature to the long nineteenth century and to our study of its literature, history, science, art, and other media. How did the natural world influence people in the nineteenth century?and how did nineteenth-century culture shape attitudes to the natural world? Have twenty-first century questions over nature, climate, and the environment changed the way we view and study the cultural products of the nineteenth century, or offered new avenues for research, especially interdisciplinary research?

For more information and to register for the conference, please visit the conference website.

Closing date for registration: 7 January 2010.

Conference organisers:

Claire McKechnie, University of Edinburgh and Dr Emily Alder, Edinburgh Napier University.

Please direct enquiries to natureconference@ed.ac.uk.

We are grateful for the support of the British Society for Literature and Science, the British Association for Victorian Studies, and the Centre for Literature and Writing at Edinburgh Napier University.