The Evolution of Literature: Legacies of Darwin in European Cultures

St Mary's College, Durham 4-6 April

Programme

Friday 4 April

15.00-17.00: Registration

Section One: The Anglophone World

17.30-18.30 David Amigoni (Keele): Down the Darwinian Line(s): Inherited Characteristics in Biology, Literature and Culture

*20.00-21.00 A. S. Byatt and Patricia Waugh (Durham): Darwinian Fictions (Elvet Riverside 140)
This event is open to the public - admission free.

Saturday 5 April

09.30-11.00 Anna Barton (Keele): An Evolutionist to his Son: Tennyson, Darwin and the Poetry of Inheritance
John Holmes (Reading): Victorian Evolutionary Criticism and the Pitfalls of Consilience

11.30-13.00 Jon Adams (London): Value Judgements and Functional Roles: Carroll's Quarrel With Pinker
Wendy Wheeler (London): The Book of Nature and the Semiosic Tree of Life: Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Literature

Section Two: The Francophone World

14.30-16.00 Christopher Lloyd (Durham): Men, Monkeys, and Monsters: the Evolution of Popular Fiction from the Fin-de-siècle to the Present

Louise Lyle (Sheffield): The Evolution of Humanity in Vercors's " Les animaux dénaturés" and Romain Gary's "Les racines du ciel"

16.30-17.15 Douglas Morrey (Warwick): Houellebecq, Genetics and Evolutionary Psychology

18.00-19.00 David Baguley (Durham/UWO): Zola and Darwin: A Reassessment

Sunday 6 April

Section Three: The Germanophone World

09.00-10.00 John A. McCarthy (Vanderbilt): Nietzsche and Darwin: Life as Literature, Literature as Life

10.30-12.00 David Midgley (Cambridge): The Reception of Bergson's "L'évolution créatrice" in the German-Speaking World

Katja Mellmann (Munich): Evolutionary Psychology as Heuristic of Literary Studies

Crossovers

(tbc)

The Future

14.30-15.15 Alistair Brown (Durham): The E-Volutionary Novel: Darwinian Digital Narratives

Outlook

16.30-17.30 Elinor Shaffer (London): The Reception of Darwin in Europe

Conference site address:
St Mary's College
University of Durham
Elvet Hill Road
GB-Durham DH1 3LR
Telephone (Reception) 0044 (0)191 334 5719

http://www.dur.ac.uk/ias/

Attendance fee including tea/coffee and lunch £100 (unwaged £55) Attendance fee including full board accommodation, tea/coffee, and lunch £200 (unwaged £155)