CFP

Science Museum and Tate Modern, London, 23-24 January 2009

On 7 May 1959, C. P. Snow delivered the Rede Lecture in Cambridge on the subject of The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. A failed scientist and a moderately successful novelist, C. P. Snow drew on his experience as a Civil Service Commissioner to consider what seemed to him to be an increasing fissure between ‘literary intellectuals’ and ‘natural scientists’. In part an attack on the perceived insularity, decadence and political sterility of the London literary scene, in part a complaint about the poverty of a humanities education and a demand for curriculum reform in schools and universities, the lecture was, most fundamentally, a critique of the lack of mutually intelligible exchange between the two cultures. As the 1950s drew to a close, Snow believed that only a national culture as aware of the importance of knowing the second law of thermodynamics as of knowing the plays of Shakespeare, would be fit to offer developing countries the scientific and technological solutions to poverty and deprivation that were so urgently required.

The London Consortium is bringing together the Science Museum and Tate Modern in a two-day conference to mark fifty years of the two cultures. Divided into a more specialised academic event and a more public occasion, it will consider the history of this debate, asking whether Snow’s critique has been addressed by the increase in multi-disciplinary research, alongside the expansion of educational curricula and provision within science and the humanities. But in a world of increasing disciplinary specialisation in which there has been exponential growth of sub-disciplines in both science and the humanities, it will also ask whether the distinctions between and indeed within the two cultures might have become further entrenched. The most fundamental question this celebration of 50 years since Snow’s lecture will ask, though, is how the terms of the debate may have changed.

We invite papers for a conference at the Science Museum on 23rd January 2009, that consider questions such as the following: How have new technologies such as the internet and new resources like Wikipedia reconfigured our sense of disciplinary boundaries, hierarchies of knowledge and the places where cultural capital is held? Has the new dominance within general culture of ideas drawn from the ‘life sciences’ ? molecular biology, genetics and biochemistry, ecology, epidemiology ? and their unpredictable pressings upon fundamental questions of how and why humans and other organisms should find themselves and their relationships defined in particular ways, led to an ever more complex and porous boundary between science and the humanities? How are Snow’s notions of disciplinary and national cultures to be rethought through the paradigms and politics of globalisation?

Please send 200-word abstracts for papers (20 minutes maximum) by November 1st to Dr. Laura Salisbury, School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX or l.salisbury@bbk.ac.uk.

Friday 12 December 2008 at 9:00am
Location: Royal Society, Kohn Centre

A one-day conference organised in conjunction with the Centre for Life Writing Research, King’s College London.

Dr Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808) was one of the most remarkable figures in the history of British medicine. Part of a group of radical physicians friendly with Erasmus Darwin and the Lunar Circle in the early 1790s, he set up the Pneumatic Institution near Bristol where he attempted cures using newly-discovered combinations of gases. The then-unknown Humphry Davy superintended trials, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge was among his patients.

This conference marks the bicentenary of Beddoes’s death. Speakers will include Trevor Levere, Larry Stewart, Mike Jay, George Rousseau, Giuliano Pancaldi, Iwan Morus, Neil Vickers and Jane Darcy. For further information, contact Neil Vickers (neil.vickers@kcl.ac.uk).

International Conference: Institute for Germanic and Romance Studies, London, Thurs 2 – Fri 3 July 2009.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Jacques Testart, Honorary Research Director of I.N.S.E.R.M;Fay Brauer, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales.

Difference, whether between individuals, whole populations or discrete organic species, has always been a source of fascination for mankind. The works of nineteenth-century pioneers such as Gregor Mendel and Hugo de Vries provided the basis for the modern science of genetics, which has sought not only to explain variation through projects such as the mapping of the human genome, but also to control it through the application of the techniques of eugenics and, latterly, of genetic engineering. This conference will aim to explore the impact and influence of genetic theories and related technologies in French and francophone intellectual and cultural life, with particular though not exclusive emphasis on literary and visual culture (including bande dessinée, plastic arts, cinema, TV, advertising) from the late nineteenth century to the present day, reflecting on some of the most controversial scientific and ethical questions in a corpus that embraces both the mainstream and the marginal. Suggested themes may include, but are not limited to:
· Transmission of hereditary illnesses / traits
· Cloning
· Hybridisation
· The creation of new species
· Mutants and mutation
· Teratology / dysmorphology
· Perfecting the individual / species
· Eugenics – public / private
· Genetic engineering and designer babies
· Biological utopias / dystopias
· Doctor / scientist as creator / author
· French philosophers and cultural historians and the life sciences (e.g. Henri Bergson, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault)
· French genetic scientists and their engagement with culture (e.g. Jean Rostand, François Jacob, Jacques Testart)
· DNA technologies and theories of identity

The above list is in no way intended to be exhaustive, and proposals on the conference theme are invited in English or in French. Comparative perspectives are welcomed, though emphasis should be on the study of French-language sources.

Proposals (300 words maximum) for 20-minute papers should be sent to the conference organisers, Dr Douglas Morrey (d.j.morrey@warwick.ac.uk) and Dr Louise Lyle (l.lyle@sheffield.ac.uk ) by 31 January 2009.

2009 is both the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th
anniversary of The Origin of Species. Victorian Studies will mark
the occasion with a special issue on “Darwin and the Evolution of
Victorian Studies.”

Since the publication of VS’s first Darwin issue in 1959, the study of
Darwin and the relationship of his life and work to Victorian culture
has become an industry. In the past twenty-five years alone we have
witnessed the publication of the first fifteen volumes of the Darwin
correspondence, Darwin’s 1836-1844 notebooks, major Darwin biographies
by Janet Browne and Adrian Desmond and James Moore, and important books
by such scholars as Gillian Beer, Bert Bender, Peter Bowler, Sandra
Herbert, George Levine, Ronald Numbers, Robert Richards, Rebecca Stott,
and Robert Young. In recent years, the study of Darwin has begun to take
new directions through examinations of Darwin’s writings beyond the
Origin and the Journal of Researches, investigations of Darwin’s
impact on previously overlooked areas (e.g., art and visual culture,
psychology and the emotions), and new approaches to Darwinism’s impact
on Victorian attitudes to gender and courtship, race and empire,
literature and publishing. The fact that Darwin’s complete writings and
5,000 pieces of his correspondence have been made available in
searchable online databases promises to open up Darwin scholarship even
further.

Where is the study of Darwin and Darwinism in Victorian culture heading?
This special issue will attempt to showcase work that pursues these new
approaches or offers even newer ones. I invite essays on all aspects of
Darwin and Darwin studies in the Victorian period from scholars working
in a range of areas, including history and history of science, literary
and cultural criticism, art history, and history of the book.

The deadline for submissions is July 15, 2008. Essays of not more than
8,000 words (including endnotes) should be prepared in MLA Style.
Submissions and inquiries should be sent directly to the issue’s guest
editor:

Jonathan Smith
Humanities Department
University of Michigan-Dearborn
4901 Evergreen Road
Dearborn, MI 48128
jonsmith@umich.edu

BEFORE DEPRESSION:
THE REPRESENTATION AND CULTURE OF DEPRESSION IN BRITAIN AND EUROPE, 1660-1800

A three-day conference
at The University of Northumbria at Newcastle and the University of Sunderland

June 19th to 21st, 2008
Plenary Speakers:
MADELEINE DESCARGUES-GRANT (Université de Valenciennes)
ELAINE HOBBY (University of Loughborough)
PETER SABOR (McGill University)

Call for papers

This conference seeks to explore further the phenomenon of depression ‘before depression’, and the problems that such an apparently retrospective construction might entail. The conference committee invites proposals on any aspects of the culture and representation of depression (however construed) in the period 1660-1800. Papers are acceptable in English or French.

Papers selected from the conference will be revised and published in The European Spectator/ Le spectateur européen.

Proposals of 200-300 words are invited, to be sent no later than Jan 31st, 2008, to Dr Clark Lawlor, Division of English, School of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Northumbria at Newcastle Upon Tyne,
Newcastle, NE1 8ST, United Kingdom

Proposals for papers in French should be sent to Valérie Maffre at the Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier:
email valerie.maffre@univ-montp3.fr

For further information, please contact clark.lawlor@unn.ac.uk