Adaptation is a term that bridges the divide between literature and evolution. Texts are adapted to speak to new circumstances as time advances and younger writers, directors, actors, artists, and audiences seek connections to a mutable culture. Likewise, organisms adapt over generations to better suit their circumstance.

Adaptation also presupposes a relationship to an original, a source. In organisms, unchecked replication can lead to distorted text, broken genetic code. In the age of infinite digital reproduction, of Tiktoks, NFTs,  AI-generated images or novels and so on, the concept of adaptation can generate productive conversations on the current role and nature of art. 

Have we irrevocably moved away from the notion of art as belonging to a particular time and space, having a unique context, what Benjamin called “aura”? Lawrence Venuti, who configures adaptation as translation, writes that “the interpretive force of a translation issues from the fact that the source text is not only decontextualized, but recontextualized” (Venuti 93). In nature as well as art, both the monstrous and the exquisite are born from these textual recontextualizations. 

This conference aims to approach adaptation in all its guises: The literary, the evolutionary, the personal. We seek stories of adaptation, criticism that approaches textual or theatrical adaptation, and presentations that explore the juncture between literary and evolutionary space.

Performance Studies, Literature and Science, Literary Adaptation, Genre-bending, Biosemiotics, Ecocriticism, Adaptation and Translation

Keynotes: Stephen O’Neill and John Holmes

Please send Abstracts of 250 words plus a bio in the body of an email by February 28th to timothy.day@slu.edu and olivia.badoi@slu.edu

Epistemic Transformations in Literature, Science and the Arts

Extended Deadline for Abstract Submissions

Conference of SLSAeu

European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts and ELINAS Research Center for Literature and Natural Science

May 18 – 21, 2023

Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg

The SLSAeu Conference 2023 is centered on modes of exchange between discourses and practices of knowledge production, re-presentation and simulation which lead to epistemic transformations in science, literature and arts.

Metaphors, models and simulations are epistemic tools for physics, astronomy, climatology, earth system sciences, chemistry, biology, life sciences, medicine and robotics. Model-based reasoning is employed in social sciences, cognitive sciences, computer sciences, archaeology and architecture. While the usual categories for doing scientific research are experiments, theories and their falsifications, which are mainly based on technical equipment and mathematical formalism, recent approaches investigate how models and simulations are embedded in cultural processes, and ask how they are formed or epistemically transformed as parts of material cultures. Moreover, they ask how metaphors, models and simulations receive a certain epistemic agency and autonomy due to their artefactual (Knuutilla), mediation (Morgan/Morrison) and exemplification functions (Goodman/Elgin). Philosophy of science goes so far as to ask about the epistemic functions of fiction in the process of scientific modelling and simulation, and draws parallels between scientific models and fictive characters, objects, or places of literary fiction (Frigg, Nguyen).

The conference is meant to be a platform for this interdisciplinary exchange on epistemic cultures of modelling (Gelfert): How can we explore epistemic relations between models, fiction and simulations? How can we think of literary practices and modelling strategies as specific modes of epistemic inquiry? How can we gain new knowledge through the epistemic use of imagination (Badura/Kind) in literature, the arts and science? What is the epistemic function of aesthetics in scientific modelling practices? What interpretational problems arise due to crossdisciplinary approaches and different textual, diagrammatical, algorithmical and encoding practices?

We invite participants to outline the historical, cultural, and rhetorical formation and transformation of model-based knowledge (Magnani/Bertolotti) at the intersections between science, literature and the arts. We hope for interesting encounters between different communities: the philosophy of science investigates the relationships between models, simulations and theories of fiction as make- believe (Walton, Toon) as well as the artefactual and non-representational dimensions of models (Knuuttila). Cultural semiotics conceptualizes literature and the arts as secondary modelling systems (Lotman), the philosophy of mind explores epistemic uses of imagination (Amy Kind), the philosophy of art investigates ‚exemplification‘ as an epistemic practice in art and science (Goodman, Elgin). Narratology investigates narrative factuality and experientiality (Fludernik, Ryan) and history of science examines narrative strategies of scientific writing (Brandt,  Schickore). But the question posed by Jay Labinger still remains: Where are the scientists in literature and science studies?

The conference seeks to establish and facilitate a dialogue between literary and cultural studies and various interdisciplinary science communities, history of science, philosophy of science, and science and technology studies. We invite papers as well as panels dealing with the epistemological functions of metaphors, models and simulations in literature, the arts, sciences, virtual realities, digital humanities, informatics, brain and cognitive sciences, climate sciences, earth system sciences, life sciences, astronomy, astrophyics. Questions could arise on the epistemic functions of models as mediators between arts and sciences, on the world building functions of models and literary texts, on the artefactual nature of models and simulations, on the epistemic function of aesthetics in modelling and simulation practices, on literary, artistic and scientific imagination in the process of modelling (Thorne), on the epistemic tools of representation – pictorial, mathematical, linguistic, algorithmic, 3-D —  on non-representational accounts of modelling, on the process of epistemic transformation from metaphors to models and simulations, and on the cultural materiality of models and simulations.

Abstracts

Please send 400-word abstracts by the 20th of February 2023 to Aura Heydenreich (aura.heydenreich@fau.de). Please include “SLSAeu23” in the email subject line and a brief bio/bibliography, as well as an e-mail address and a postal address. Formats include paper presentations (20-25 minutes), interdisciplinary panels (including participants from three disciplins and a moderator), art events (multimedia, AV format). SLSAeu and ELINAS are committed to supporting young talents to present their work. We invite MA and PhD students to submit their paper. Proposals for interdisciplinary roundtables spanning science/technology, literature, humanities or social sciences, and the arts are especially welcome.

Venue of the Conference

The main venue of the Conference will be the „Kollegienhaus“ and the „Orangerie“ of the Friedrich-Alexander-University (Universitätsstraße 15, 91054 Erlangen) which are located directly at the Erlangen Schlossgarten. The main train station and the University Library are just a stone’s throw away.

Accommodation

Room contingents in different hotels will be pre-reserved for conference participants. Please make your reservation as soon as possible as available rooms are limited.

For further information visit: https://www.slsaeu23.fau.de/

Key Dates:

Abstracts due:                                             20 February 2023

Decisions + Program:                                   1 March 2023

Registration:                                                 1 April 2023

Conference:                                                  18-21 May 2023

Contacts:

PD Dr. Aura Heydenreich

German and Comparative Literature

Research Fellow, ELINAS

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

President of the European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts

Aura.Heydenreich@fau.de

Prof. Dr. Klaus Mecke

Institute of Theoretical Physics

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität

Erlangen-Nürnberg

Klaus.Mecke@fau.de

The Literary Twilight Zone: Nonfictional Fiction, 1820–1920

The University of Birmingham, Wednesday 28 June 2023

"The mystical student of psychology, who knows the inadequacy of a bare statement of facts for the presentation of psychic incidents, will hardly need an apology for the form in which the narratives are cast."
Mohini Chatterji and Laura Holloway, Man: Fragments of Forgotten History (1885)

Keynote: Dr Tatiana Kontou Senior Lecturer in Nineteenth Century Literature, Oxford Brookes University

Fiction is not always entirely fictional. Indeed, many of the long nineteenth century’s most famous writers – including Edgar Allan Poe, Marie Corelli, and Émile Zola – wilfully blurred the boundary with nonfiction. Scientific and paranormal romances provided unrepentantly literary spaces to contribute to modern thought, while other authors opted for experimental naturalism, impeccably researched historical novels, hoaxes, thought experiments, and truth claims disguised as fiction.

Fascinating scholarship has analysed twentieth-century writings that sit uneasily on the fact-fiction binary, from Charles Fort’s The Book of the Damned (1919) to the space opera origins of Scientology. This work has rarely been linked in detail to its nineteenth-century origins, despite burgeoning research on occult writers like Edward Bulwer Lytton, whose novels were interpreted by some readers as partially true. Scholars of nineteenth-century literature still have much to bring to a conversation which has been flourishing in research on science fiction, esotericism, and popular culture. During this period modern disciplines and literary genres were gestating, as were (fragile) boundaries between the scholarly and the popular, the aesthetic and the scientific, the scientific and the pseudoscientific. What advantages did fiction hold for authors who chose it over nonfiction journalism or scholarly articles? And how did their readers interpret works – from the conventional to the bizarre and avant-garde – that combined Wissenschaft and fantasy?

This one-day academic workshop, hosted by the Nineteenth-Century Centre, brings together scholars interested in fiction’s relationships with the creation of knowledge. Global subject matter is welcomed, and potential topics include:

• Scientific romance
• Paranormal narratives
• Marginalised authors
• Footnotes and fiction
• Hoaxes and fraud
• Generic fluidity
• Creative nonfiction
• Pseudoarchaeology
• Imaginary portraits
• Semifiction
• The experimental novel
• Roman à thèse

Papers can be 20 minutes in length, but we also welcome proposals for alternate formats. The deadline for abstracts of up to 250 words and bios of 150 words is 17 March 2023. Send enquiries to nonfictionalfiction23@gmail.com. Travel bursaries available on request.

This event is hosted by the Nineteenth-Century Centre at the University of Birmingham, which provides a collaborative network for scholars working across traditional disciplinary, national, and temporal boundaries. They host regular events of interest to members and mobilise the rich resources of the local area to support both research and teaching.

This event is funded by grants from the Leverhulme Trust and the British Society for Literature and Science.