Category: Modern and Contemporary
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Walpert, Bryan, Resistance to Science in Contemporary American Poetry
Bryan Walpert, Resistance to Science in Contemporary American Poetry (Routledge, 2011), 220pp. $141. ISBN 978-0415893348 Despite the rapid expansion of scientific research after the second world war into every corner of the world, animal, vegetable, mineral and human, studies of the impact of this growing scientific control of knowledge on poetry remain scarce. This is…
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Miller, Sean, Strung Together: The Cultural Currency of String Theory as a Scientific Imaginary
Sean Miller, Strung Together: The Cultural Currency of String Theory as a Scientific Imaginary (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2013), 256pp. $50. ISBN 978-0-472-11866-3. O dieses ist das Tier, das es nicht gibt. Sie wußtens nicht und habens jeden Falls – sein Wandeln, seine Haltung, seinen Hals, bis in des stillen Blickes…
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Bruni, John, Scientific Americans: The Making of Popular Science and Evolution in Early-Twentieth-Century U.S. Literature and Culture
John Bruni, Scientific Americans: The Making of Popular Science and Evolution in Early-Twentieth-Century U.S. Literature and Culture (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014). Herbert Spencer’s doctrine of ‘survival of the fittest’ was an undeniable influence on non-specialist conceptions of evolution around the turn of the twentieth century, particularly in America. Social Darwinism, though inaccurately…
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Marsden, Ben and Hazel Hutchison and Ralph O’Connor (eds), Uncommon Contexts: Encounters Between Science and Literature, 1800-1914
Marsden, Ben, Hazel Hutchison and Ralph O’Connor, eds. Uncommon Contexts: Encounters Between Science and Literature, 1800-1914. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013. 256pp £60 HB ISBN 978-1-84893-362-0 In his introduction, Ben Marsden frames Uncommon Contexts as a rejection of C.P. Snow’s dichotomy between the ‘two cultures’ of literature and science. Marsden’s objective in this collection is to cut across…
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Salisbury, Laura and Andrew Shail (eds), Neurology and Modernity
Laura Salisbury and Andrew Shail (eds.), Neurology and Modernity: A Cultural History of Nervous Systems, 1800-1950 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 298 pp. £60 Hb. ISBN 978-0-230-23313-3. Neurology and Modernity announces itself as a book which argues that ‘to speak of neurology and modernity is to describe a relationship of mutual constitution’ (1), describing the two…
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Dawson, Gowan and Bernard Lightman (eds), Victorian Science and Literature (8 vols)
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by
John Holmes
Gowan Dawson and Bernard Lightman (eds), Victorian Science and Literature, 8 vols (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011-12). 3408 pp. £700 hb (£350 per 4 volume set). ISBN 978-1848930919 and 978-1848930926. In their general introduction to their huge and handsome new anthology of Victorian writings about science, Gowan Dawson and Bernard Lightman spell out very clearly…
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Schaffner, Anna Katharina, Modernism and Perversion
Anna Katharina Schaffner, Modernism and Perversion: Sexual Deviance in Sexology and Literature, 1850-1930 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 315pp. £18.99 Pb. ISBN 9780230231634. Modernism and Perversion explores what happened after ‘[t]he pervert ceased to be a sinner and instead became a patient’ (5). This shift was connected to ‘the emergence of sexology’ (5). Drawing on the work…
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Hanson, Clare, Eugenics, Literature and Culture in Post-war Britain
Clare Hanson, Eugenics, Literature and Culture in Post-War Britain (New York: Routledge, 2013). 190pp. HB £85.00. ISBN 9780415806985. Eugenics is frequently invoked in discussions of contemporary biomedicine and biotechnologies. Whether arguing that post-genomic biology provides opportunities for eugenics to re-emerge (as Troy Duster does), or that contemporary biopolitics is utterly dissimilar to the biopolitical strategies…
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Quiroga, Rodrigo Quian, Borges and Memory
Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, Borges and Memory: Encounters with the Human Brain (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012). 224pp. Hb £17.95. ISBN 9780262018210. Recent years have arguably seen a sharp increase of interest in cognitive science, psychology and all things ‘neuro’, not only in academic circles but also in popular culture and primers aimed at the layperson. A…
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Brooke, Keith (ed), Strange Divisions & Alien Territories
Keith Brooke (ed.), Strange Divisions & Alien Territories: The Sub-Genres of Science Fiction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), xiv + 222 pp. £18.99 pb. ISBN 9780230249677. What makes up a genre? This volume proposes to examine science fiction (sf) by scrutinising its component parts, offering twelve introductory essays on sub-genres from cyberpunk to space opera. The…
