In his article ‘Literature and Science under the Microscope’ (Journal of Victorian Culture, EUP, 2006) Dawson argues that the BSLS ‘offers an opportunity to foster a distinctively historicist or contextual approach to the study of science and literature’ (302), and offers a stimulating review of recent critical work as well as a discussion of the critical challenges and difficulties that his argument raises.

These challenges are those that we’ll be taking up in March in Birmingham.

Friday

After a warm welcome to delegates from the conference organiser Alice Jenkins Professor David Amigoni gave a lively plenary concerning contemporary Darwinian literary criticism and its rebuff in Ian McEwan’s Saturday. David’s discussion elegantly highlighted the careful consideration given by a leading contemporary novellist to questions of consciousness, culture, the literary and its relationship with science. The afternoon continued with parallel sessions of papers before we met again to listen to Professor Tim Fulford.

Saturday

Papers today ranged from discussions of medicine in the Early Modern period to nanotechnology today. Michelle Dimeo (Warwick) spoke on Early Modern domestic medical receipt books as a window onto health and social relations in the seventeenth century, while Andy Sawyer (Liverpool) chaired a panel focussed on pressing questions concerning contemporary high technology, science and culture. The morning ended with a round table discussion on teaching literature, science and film.

above: John Holmes talks to Dan Cordle and Rebecca Stott, participants in the first roundtable on teaching literature, science and film.

The afternoon began with Professor Alan Rauch’s (North Carolina) plenary entitled ‘The Space of Information in the Early Nineteenth Century: Roads, Bridges, and Streets of Knowledge’.