BSLS 2008 programme

Conference Programme

Thursday 27 March
12.00-13.00 Conference Registration (Great Hall)
13.00-14.30 Plenary 1 (Salvin Room) Helen Small (Pembroke College, Oxford), ‘The Function of Antagonism’ Chair: Alice Jenkins
14.30-16.00 Parallel Panels
Panel 1 (Salvin room): Modernism and Science Chair: Martin Willis
Sarah Cain (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge), ‘The Psychotechnics of American Modernism’
Vike Martina Plock (Cardiff University), ‘The Sciences of Joyce’s “Ithaca‿’
Michael H. Whitworth (Merton College, Oxford), C. Day Lewis and the Lure of Science’
Panel 2 (Old Library) Chair: Alice Jenkins
Jason Hall (University of Exeter), ‘“Artificiall Versifying‿: Computer-Generated Poetry and Victorian Curiosity’
Heidi Kunz (Randolph College), ‘Emblematic Astronomy in Evans’ Macaria’
Gregory Tate (Linacre College, Oxford), ‘The Two Voices: Tennyson and the Psychologists’
Panel 3 (Senior Common Room) Chair: David Amigoni
Peter Middleton (University of Southampton), ‘In Oppenheimer’s Shadow: Charles Olson’s Emulation of Science’
Christopher Damien Auretta (New University of Lisbon, Portugal), ‘Myth, Technology and Knowledge in António Gedeão’s Drama RTX 78/24: a Portuguese Contribution to Karl Popper’s Open Society’
Rachel Mills (University of Oxford), ‘Wave-particle Duality in the Writings of Virginia Woolf: a Heuristic Point of View’
16.00-17.00 Refreshments plus room registration and check-in (Great Hall)
17.00-18.30 Parallel Panels
Panel 4 (Salvin room) Chair: Corinna Wagner
Darren Wagner (University of Saskatchewan, Canada), ‘Anima to Animal: Preformationism and the Demystification of the Human Body in the Eighteenth Century’
Greg Lynall (University of Liverpool), ‘The “Physico-Logical Scheme‿ in Swift’s A Tale of a Tub’
Sam George (University of Hertfordshire), ‘Feminine Darwiniana: Women Writers and Erasmus Darwin’s Loves of the Plants’
Panel 5 (Old Library) Chair: Martin Willis
Michael Wainwright, ‘Darwin, Weismann, and Wilde: Monstrous Heredity in The Picture of Dorian Gray’
Mackenzie Bartlett (Birkbeck College, University of London), ‘Hysterical Laughter and the Construction of ‘Manhood’ in Late Victorian Britain’
Nazia Parveen (University of Leicester), ‘Physiology and Flower Aesthetics in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray’
Panel 6 (Senior Common Room) Chair: Sharon Ruston
Sara Clayson (Open University), ‘A Savage Civilization: Racial and Gender Hybridity in Dinah Craik’s Olive‘
Alistair Brown (University of Durham), ‘“Man has come back to his own‿: Victorian Degeneration and Posthuman Enlightenment in The War of the Worlds and Independence Day’
Robin Stoate (University of Newcastle), ‘Artificial Belligerence: Rethinking the Inevitable Malevolence of the Fictional AI’
19.00 Dinner (Comus)
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Friday 28 March
09.00-10.30 Parallel Panels
Panel 7 (Salvin Room) Chair: John Holmes
Benjamin Wardhaugh (All Souls College, Oxford), ‘Lice-men and Logarithms: Mathematics and Mathematicians in Early Modern Utopias’
Nicolas Correard (Université Paris), ‘Counter-Encyclopaedia in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe: a Minor Genre between Epistemological Scepticism and Satirical Fancy’
Michaela Schrage-Früh (University of Mainz, Germany), The Science of Dreams in Early Modern Literature and Culture’
Panel 8 (Old Library) Chair: Sam George
Mary Noble (Princeton University), ‘A survival from the custom of capture and purchase’: Anthropology and the Marriage Question in Jude the Obscure’
Encarnacion Trinidad Barrantes (Open University, Ireland), ‘Oliver Wendell Holmes and the “Medicated Gaze‿’
Helena Ifill (University of Sheffield), ‘“How shall I anatomise this woman?‿: Dissecting “Womanliness‿ in John Marchmont’s Legacy’
Panel 9 (Senior Common Room) Chair: Daniel Cordle
Laurence Davies (University of Glasgow), ‘Satire and Spiritualism: The Fictional Double Life of the Fourth Dimension’
Elizabeth Cornell (Fordham University), ‘Einstein, Relativity, and “the idiot,‿ Benjy Compson’
Ian James Kidd (Durham University), ‘A Procession of the Damned”: Charles Hoy Fort, Anomalous Phenomena, and Critical Philosophy of Science’
10.30-11.00 Coffee (Great Hall)
11.00-12.30 Parallel Panels
Panel 10 (Salvin Room) Chair: John Holmes
Adelene Buckland (University of Cambridge), ‘Gideon Mantell, Thomas Hardy and the Politics of Geological Knowledge’
Gowan Dawson (University of Leicester), ‘Correlating Parts in Victorian Serial Fiction; or, Being Fair to Richard Owen’
Itsuki Kitani (University of Durham), ‘Sympathy and “Organic Happiness” in Shelley’s Sensitive Plant’
Panel 11 (Old Library): An Anatomy of Melancholy: The Changing Cultural Status of Melancholy in Eighteenth and Nineteenth CenturiesChair: Betty Haglund
Clark Lawlor (Northumbria University), ‘Fashionable Melancholy: Why were depressive states valorised as positive phenomena before the nineteenth century?’
Simon Hull, ‘The Fool and the Melancholic: A Romantic Dialogue’
Jane Darcy (King’s College London), ‘The Cultural Status of Melancholy in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of the Carlyles’
Panel 12 (Senior Common Room): Beauty/Aesthetics in Science and LiteratureChair: Will Buckingham
Janine Rogers (Mount Allison University), ‘Beauty Bare: Scientific Aesthetics and Poetic Form’
Jonathan Taylor (De Montfort University), ‘On Microcosms, Macrocosms and the Music of the Spheres’
Eleanor Sandry (University of Western Australia), ‘Beautiful Machines: Robotic Technology and Conceptions of a “Machine Aesthetic‿’
12.30-14.00 AGM (Salvin Room) and Lunch (Great Hall)Exhibition of Rare Books from Keele University’s Special Collections (Great Hall)
14.00-15.30 Plenary 2: (Salvin Room) Frank Close (Exeter College, Oxford), ‘The Void: Everything about Nothing’ Chair: Michael Whitworth
15.30-1600 Coffee (Great Hall)
16.00-17.30 Parallel Panels
Panel 13 (Salvin Room) Chair: Alan Rauch
Corinna Wagner (University of Exeter), ‘“The Face, what a horror‿: Physiognomy, Subjectivity and Gothic Literature’
Megan Coyer (University of Glasgow), ‘Phrenological Controversy in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and “The Modern Pythagorean‿’
Rebecca Summerhays (Brown University), ‘I Was Made For You: Relational Life in William Paley’s Natural Theology and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’
Panel 14 (Old Library) Chair: Gowan Dawson
Melanie Keene (University of Cambridge), ‘Enchanted Objects: the Fairy-Land of Victorian Science’
Katharina Boehm (King’s College, London), Medical narratives of child development, primitivism and Dombey and Son’
Greta Perletti (University of Bergamo), Remembering Too Much: The Hypermnesic Imagination in Victorian Science and Literature’
Panel 15 (Senior Common Room) Chair: Peter Middleton
John Holmes (University of Reading), ‘Evolution in the Poems of Edwin Morgan’
Helena Feder (East Carolina University), ‘Literature and the Biological Idea of Culture’
Daniel Cordle (Nottingham Trent University), ‘New Nuclear Criticisms: Reassessing Nuclear Criticism for the Twenty-First Century’
17.30-18.30 Parallel Panels
Panel 16 (Old Library): Maria Graham Panel Chair: Jane Darcy
Betty Hagglund (Nottingham Trent University), ‘The Botanical Writings of Maria Graham’
Carl Thompson (Nottingham Trent University), ‘Maria Graham’s Earthquake: The Woman Traveller as Scientific Observer’
Panel 17 (Senior Common Room) Chair: Sam George
Alan Rauch (University of North Carolina), ‘Bookish Science: Private Subscription Libraries and the Making of Knowledge’
Alice Jenkins (University of Glasgow), ‘Science and Literature for the Middle Classes: Lectures at the Early Nineteenth-Century Lit and Phils’
19.30-20.00 Drinks Reception sponsored by the British Society for the History of Science (Great Hall)
20.00 Dinner (Salvin)
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Saturday 29 March
09.00-10.30 Plenary (Salvin) Steven Connor (Birkbeck College, London), ‘Pregnable of Eye: X-Rays, Vision and Magic’Chair: David Amigoni
10.30-11.00 Coffee (Great Hall)
11.00-12.00 Poetry Reading (Salvin): Deryn Rees-Jones and Helen Clare Chair: Sharon Ruston
12.00-13.30 Parallel Panel
Panel 18 (Salvin Room) Chair: Michael Whitworth
Jon Adams (London School of Economics), ‘The Evidential Status of Fiction’
Will Buckingham (Staffordshire University), ‘Fiction and the Lies of Consciousness’
Simon de Bourcier (University of East Anglia), ‘Travels in the Fourth Dimension in Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day’
Panel 19 (Old Library) Chair: David Amigoni
John Bryden (University of Leeds), ‘Flexible Narratives in Science and Technology’
Nasser Hussain (University of York), ‘Some Notes toward a Genetic Poetics’
Elizabeth Throesch (York St John University), ‘Hyperspace and the House of Fiction’
Panel 20 (Senior Common Room): Literature and the Archaeological Imagination Chair: Alice Jenkins
Alexandra Warwick (University of Westminster), ‘ What Lies Beneath: Archeology and the Uses of Metaphor’
Martin Willis (University of Glamorgan), ‘Seeing Ancient Egypt in Stoker’s The Jewel of the Seven Stars’
Virginia Zimmerman (Bucknell University), ‘“Looking Forwards‿ – Preparing an Archaeology of the Present’
13.30 Lunch, conference ends (Great Hall)
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