Conference Programme
This is the final programme for the conference.
Registration and accommodation details can be found on the registration page.
| Thursday 29th March | |
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| 1300-1430 | Panel 1 — Dickens Conference Room |
| Genre and Early Nineteenth Century Science | |
| Chair: Alice Jenkins, Glasgow | |
| Melanie Keene, Cambridge, ‘Robert Hunt and the Genres of Science Writing’ | |
| Adelene Buckland, Oxford, ‘ “Many-syllabled mysteries: natural history and literary representation in Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton’ | |
| Felix Sprang, University of Hamburg, ‘ “Science is best delivered in prose Generic Constraints on early 19th C Scientific Writing’ | |
| Panel 2 — Lyttelton Lecture Theatre | |
| Cold War Bodies and Cities | |
| Chair: John Holmes, Reading | |
| Jon Adams and Ed Ramsden, LSE, ‘The Man Behind the Rats of NIMH’ | |
| Charlotte Sleigh, U of Kent, ‘Nuclear Bodies: Don Delillo's Footballer and Other Mutants’ | |
| Daniel Cordle, Nottingham Trent, ‘Nuclear Cities: Containing Atomic Anxiety in the Public Spaces of the Early Cold War' | |
| 1430-1530 | Panel 3 — Lyttelton Lecture Theatre |
| Victorian Mathematics | |
| Chair: Gowan Dawson, Leicester | |
| Alice Jenkins, Glasgow, ‘Euclid's Elements in Victorian Culture' | |
| Mariateresa Franza, Salerno, Italy, ‘Mathematical Fiction: Three Victorian Writers at Work' | |
| Panel 4 — Dickens Conference Room | |
| Early Scientific Institutions | |
| Chair: Philip Smallwood, UCE Birmingham | |
| Sophie Bouvier, Birmingham, ‘Drama and Scientific Performance in Restoration England: The Royal Society of Science' | |
| Gregory Lynall, Liverpool, ‘Sinking the “Spider’s Cittadel: Swift’s Battel of the Books and Thomas Burnet’s “Philosophical Romance of the Earth’ | |
| Panel 5 — John Peak Conference Room | |
| Nineteenth century Popular Fiction and Science | |
| Chair: John Holmes, Reading | |
| Julia Reid, Leeds, ‘ “She Who Must be Obeyed: Anthropology and Matriarchy in H. Rider Haggard's She’ | |
| Sara Clayson, Birmingham, ‘ “The Actress' Made by the Awful Necessity of her Life and the “Man Who Would Never Get On in the World: Darwinism and Androgyny in Lady Audley's Secret’ | |
| 1530-1600 | Tea |
| 1600-1700 | First Plenary: Professor Robert Crawford, St Andrews |
| Lyttelton Lecture Theatre | |
| ‘Poetry, Science and the Contemporary University’ | |
| 1700-1830 | Panel 6 — Lyttelton Lecture Theatre |
| Children's Books and Science | |
| Chair: Sarah Wood, UCE Birmingham | |
| Alice Bell, Imperial, ‘From the Ridiculous to the Sublime: Appeals of Children's Popular Science' | |
| Farah Mendlesohn (Middlesex University) and Zara Baxter, ‘Science Fiction readers, Science and Science Education' | |
| Panel 7 — Dickens Conference Room | |
| Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Bodies and Technology | |
| Chair: John Holmes, Reading | |
| Sharon Ruston, Keele, ‘William Godwin and the Animal Magnetists' | |
| Jane Darcy, KCL, ‘Dissipated Burns and Melancholic Currie' | |
| Teresa Barnard, De Montford, ‘Inspired by the Orrery: Anna Seward's “Terrestrial Year ’ | |
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| Friday 30th March | |
| 0930-1100 | Panel 8 — Dickens Conference Room |
| Science and Contemporary Fiction | |
| Chair: Michael Whitworth, Oxford | |
| Nicole Heber, U. of Melbourne, ‘Paralysis and Violence: The Clash of the Literary and Scientific in Ian McEwan's Saturday‘ | |
| Will Buckingham, Staffordshire, ‘Italo Calvino and Lucretius: Fiction, Science and the Reconciliation of the World' | |
| Mélissa Fox-Muraton, Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont II, ‘Science Fiction or Scientific Fiction? Miichel Houellebecq and the Challenge to Modern Literature' | |
| Panel 9 — Lyttelton Lecture Theatre | |
| Histories of Science Fiction | |
| Chair: Martin Willis, Glamorgan | |
| Kate Hebblethwaite, Trinity College, Dublin, ‘Martian Mind Manipulation’ | |
| Andy Sawyer, Liverpool, ‘Information Architectures: or, Christopher Marlowe’s play “The Spy at Londinium’ | |
| Amanda Mordavsky Caleb, U of Sheffield, ‘Cutliffe Hyne: A Forgotten Science Fiction Writer’ | |
| 1100-1130 | Coffee |
| 1130-1300 | Panel 10 — Lyttelton Lecture Theatre |
| Science and Modernism | |
| Chair: Michael Whitworth, Oxford | |
| Vike Martina Plock, UC Dublin, ‘Nerves Over-strung: Brainpower and Neurophysiology in Joyce's Ulysses’ | |
| Katy Price, Anglia Ruskin U, ‘On the Back of Light Waves' | |
| Michael Hoare, Royal Holloway, ‘The Scientist without properties: Ratio and Mystik in Musil's Mann ohne Eigenschaften’ | |
| Panel 11 — Dickens Conference Room | |
| Writing Bodies | |
| Chair:Martin Willis, Glamorgan | |
| Helen Sutherland, U. of Glasgow, ‘Brain Function and Fiction: Some Interactions between Neuroscience and Literature' | |
| Kathleen Béres-Rogers, U. of North Carolinas, ‘ “Disciplining Medicine: Romantic-Era Patient Poetry’ | |
| Eleanor Sandry, U of Western Australia, ‘Face and Body in Developing Human-Robot Relations’ | |
| 1300-1400 | Lunch |
| 1400-1545 | Panel 12 — Lyttelton Lecture Theatre |
| Science and the Senses in the Long Nineteenth Century | |
| Chair: Stuart Robertson, UCE Birmingham | |
| Sibylle Erle, Bishop Grosseteste UC ‘Shadows in the Cave: How Artificial Eyes and Changing Lenses Refocused Blake's Vision’ | |
| Tim Fulford, Nottingham Trent, ‘The Sound of the Shaman: Scientists and Eskimos in the Arctic’ | |
| Laurie Garrison, Royal Holloway, ‘Taxonomies of Stimulation: The Discourse of Sexuality in 1860s Reviews of Sensation Novels’ | |
| Gavin Budge, UCE Birmingham, ‘The Spectre of Authority: Medicine and Perception in Carlyle’s History of the French Revolution’ | |
| Panel 13 — Dickens Conference Room | |
| Science and Twentieth Century Theatre | |
| Chair:David Roberts, , UCE Birmingham | |
| Liliane Campos, Sorbonne, ‘Hidden Numbers: the Threat of Knowledge in Caryl Churchill's Plays’ | |
| Maria Aline Fereirra, U. of Aveiro, ‘ “Science-in-fiction: Carl Djerassi's Work’ | |
| Anna Harpin, Cambridge, ‘Writing in the Margins – Re-inscribing the Medical Model in Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis’ | |
| Zachary Dunbar, Royal Holloway, ‘Science and the Modern Tragic Chorus: Aspects of Chaos and Complexity’ | |
| 1545-1615 | Tea |
| 1615-1715 | Second Plenary: Jenny Uglow |
| Lyttelton Lecture Theatre | |
| Thomas Bewick: Wordsworth’s ‘Poet of the Tyne’ | |
| 1715-1845 | Panel 14 — Lyttelton Lecture Theatre |
| Astronomy | |
| Chair: Martin Willis, Glamorgan | |
| Janine Rogers, Mount Allison U, Canada, ‘Reading the Night Sky: David H Levy, the Literary Astronomer’ | |
| Dave Clements, Imperial, ‘The Size of Space: Scales in Fact and Fiction’ | |
| Elanora Sasso, U of Chieti-Pescara, Italy, ‘ “An Eye for such Mysteries: Thomas Hardy and the Law of the Stars’ | |
| Panel 15 — Dickens Conference Room | |
| Nineteenth-Century Transmission | |
| Chair: Sally Shuttleworth, Oxford | |
| Jim Mussell, Birkbeck, ‘Writing the “Great Proteus of Disease: Periodical “Literature and the 1890 Influenza Pandemic’ | |
| Fionnuala Dillane, UC Dublin, ‘ “Pale Pulpy and Cretinous:The Scientist and the Periodical Press in George Eliot's Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)’ | |
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| Saturday 31st March | |
| 0930-1100 | Panel 16 |
| Science and Poetics 1860-1930 — Lyttelton Lecture Theatre | |
| Chair: Alice Jenkins | |
| Michael H Whitworth, Oxford, ‘The Neo-Metaphysical poetry of Michael Roberts’ | |
| John Holmes, Reading, ‘Tennyson, the Higher Pantheism, and the Illusion of a Poetry of Science’ | |
| Marie Banfield, Birkbeck, ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poetry, Poetics and the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Scientific Revolution’ | |
| Panel 17 — Dickens Conference Room | |
| Bodies Dead and Alive | |
| Chair: Chris McCabe, Birmingham (author of Dirty Little Lies) | |
| Terence H W Shih, U. of Edinburgh, ‘Desire for Beauty: A Trilogy of Bodily Modifications’ | |
| Sarah Dauncey, Warwick, ‘Witnessing Evidence: Forensic Science and the Power of Bodies and Things to Attest' | |
| Sara Wasson, Napier U, ‘Recalcitrant Copies and Vulnerable Bodies: Literary Engagements with Human Cloning' | |
| 1100-1130 | Coffee |
| 1130-1230 | Panel 18 cancelled |
| Panel 19 | |
| Sensation — Dickens Conference Room | |
| Chair:TBA | |
| Laura Daniels, Exeter, ‘Reclaiming Sensation: Association Psychology and Wilkie Collins' Poor Miss Finch’ | |
| Helena Ifill, Sheffield, ‘ “I Cannot Leave You if I Would: Monomania in Wilkie Collin's Basil and No Name’ | |
| Verity Hunt, Reading, ‘Learning to Dream: Technology, Sensory Perception & Memory in George Du Maurier's Peter Ibbetson’ | |
| Panel 20 Cancelled | |
| New addition, parallel with panel 19 — Lyttelton Lecture Theatre | |
| Chris McCabe, University of Birmingham, ‘Fact and Fiction: Scientific and Unscientific English’ | |
| 1230-1330 | Third plenary: Professor Sally Shuttleworth, Oxford |
| — Lyttelton Lecture Theatre | |
| ‘Childhood Lies in Victorian Literature and Science’ | |
| 1330-1430 | Lunch and BSLS AGM (Agenda and previous minutes to follow). |
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