Literature and Science 1922-2022
Universita di Roma, 30-31 March 2023
The conference is intended to foster a productive dialogue between the literary and scientific communities. This conference targets issues of contiguity between the human and the external world (animals, plants, objects, the biosphere as a whole), from a decentred, non-anthropomorphic perspective. From this vantage point, it intends to re-examine Modernism: 2022 is also the centenary of both Ulysses and The Waste Land — works that place centre stage figures of knowledge (Ulysses; Tiresias) — foregrounding the human creature’s uncanny capacity for distancing and domination of cosmic reality through logos and technique. These modernist classics engage with science; they show the indebtedness of literature to — and alignment with — scientific attitudes and methods(Pound, Huxley, Woolf, M. Moore, Beckett, among many more).
Organisers invite submissions focused on, but not limited to, the following topics:
Please send anonymized 300-500-word abstracts in English and a short bio of no more than 150 words by 31 July 2022 to: literatureandsciencerome2023@gmail.com. Presenters will be notified of acceptance by 30 September 2022.
- Literature and sciences (medicine, psychology, psychoanalysis, anthropology, history, hard and soft sciences)
- Modernism and science
- Postmodernism and science
- Literary criticism as/and science
- The literary in science
- Posthumanism
- Trans-species languages and discourses
- The human in context: plants
- The human in context: animals
- The human in context: the world of objects
- Philosophy and reality as independent from human thought
- Mythological figures of the Search for Knowledge (Prometheus, Oedipus, Ulysses)
- Prosthetic bodies
- Artificial intelligence
- Ageing/youth preservation
- Faith, Science, Literature
Please send anonymized 300-500-word abstracts in English and a short bio of no more than 150 words by 31 July 2022 to: literatureandsciencerome2023@gmail.com. Presenters will be notified of acceptance by 30 September 2022.