This is the programme for the seventh annual BSLS conference, University of Oxford, 12-14 April 2012.
Thursday 12 April 2012
1300 Registration: St Cross Building, Manor Road, Oxford.
Refreshments (tea/coffee) available; please make your own arrangements for lunch.
1345 Opening Address
1400–1530 Session 1
(1A) Medicine and the Victorians (Chair: Tony Harris)
Willis, Martin ‘Silas Marner’s Catalepsy.’
Ifill, Helena. ‘Victorian Depictions of Monomania in Medical, Popular and Sensation Literature.’
(1B) Versions of Mathematics (Chair: TBC).
Bayley, Melanie. ‘“The recent draughts of Truth”: nineteenth-century science, progressive Christianity and Edwin Abbott’s Flatland.’
Engelhardt, Nina. ‘The “New Method of Thought itself”: Mathematics in Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities.
Marcó del Pont, Xavier. ‘One and the Infinite: Mathematical Paradox in The Crying of Lot 49.’
(1C) Opportunities For The Study Of Science And Literature In Secondary Education
Kevin Mosedale (Radley College, Oxfordshire).
1530-1600 Coffee Break
1600-1715 Plenary: Dr Neil Vickers: ‘Literature and Medicine: A Snapshot’
1715-1730 Break
1730-1900 Session 2
(2A) Havelock Ellis and Literary Culture (Chair: Emily Alder)
Funke, Jana. ‘“The Purifying Breath of Spring”: Havelock Ellis, Literature and the Scientific Spirit.’
Nottingham, Chris. ‘The View from Above – Havelock Ellis’s Utopia.’ Plock, Vike. ‘James Joyce, Havelock Ellis and the New Scientific Spirit.’
(2B) Brighter, Faster, Higher: Technologies of Space, Light, and Flight (Chair: Laura Ludtke)
Lynall, Greg. ‘“Bundling up the Sun-beams”: Burning Mirrors in Eighteenth-Century Knowledge and Culture.’
McLean, Steve. ‘In Search of the Modern Icarus: Literature and Aeronautics, c.1783-c.1900.’
(2C) Medicine and the Body (Chair: TBC).
Gazzard, Kate. ‘Travels and Circulations: Mapping Bodies in Dickens’s Early Works.’
MacFarlane, Neil. ‘Benjamin Franklin’s phrenological presence in Bleak House and Little Dorrit.’
(2D) The Boundaries of the Field (Chair: Martin Willis)
Degenring, Folkert. ‘How many Cultures? Literature, Science, and Theory.’
Donaldson, Kirstin. ‘The Fallacy of the ‘Two Cultures’: An ‘Experiment’ in Cambridge.’
Garratt, Peter. ‘The Ice-Age Man Cometh: Literary Darwinism in Critical Perspective.’
Dining arrangements: after the last session, delegates are free to make their own arrangements for dinner. Details of local pubs and restaurants will be included in the printed conference programme.
Friday 13 April 2012
0900-1030 Session 3
(3A) ‘Purity’, Science, and the Public (Chair: Vike Plock)
Hanson, Clare. ‘“Race” and Eugenics in Post-war Britain.’
Micakovic, Beth. ‘Wireless English: T. S. Eliot and the invisible paragons of English speech.’
(3B) Psychology and Perception. (Chair: Stuart Robertson).
Tate, Gregory. ‘Sensibility and Sense: Binary Modes of Knowing in Romantic Literature and Science.’
Parveen, Nazia. ‘Oscar Wilde and Colour.’
Episcopo, Giuseppe. ‘The rule of the mess: entropy and the novel in C.E. Gadda and Thomas Pynchon.’
(3C) Forms of Creation (Chair: Daniel Cordle)
Ferreira, Maria Aline. ‘To Be Born or Not To Be Born: Ectogenesis or the Posthuman Womb.’
van Zoggel, Marc. ‘Both a living and an inanimate creature’: Science and Literature as Forms of Creation in Harry Mulisch’s The Procedure.’
Halpin, Jenni. ‘To Make a Body Matter, Destroy the Ones You Have: Possession and Reproduction in Harvest.’
1000-1100 Coffee Break
1100-1245 Session 4 [N.B. 105 minutes]
(4A) Theories of Romanticism (Chair: Gregory Tate).
Budge, Gavin. ‘Eighteenth-Century Epigenesis, Romantic Organicism and the Renaissance Revival.’
Fairclough, Mary. ‘Dr Thomas Beddoes and the Politics of the Imagination.’
Beeby, Kate. ‘“Without Contraries is no Progression”: Romantic Literature: A Development of the Enlightenment, or a Reaction Against it?’
Ruston, Sharon. ‘Humphry Davy and S. T. Coleridge: Sublimation and the Sublime.’
(4B) Periodicals
Crossland, Rachel. ‘The ‘living interest’ of the Scientific Border-Land: Popular Science in The New Quarterly, 1907-1910.’
Tattersdill, William. ‘Science, Fiction and The Future: Temporal Cycles in the Fin de Siècle Periodical Press.’
Kirchhofer, Anton, and Anna Auguscik. ‘The Role of Fiction in Multi- Disciplinary Science Journals: A Structured Survey (1990-2010).’
König-Porstner, Heidi. ‘The early years of general relativity, as reflected in English and German literature.’
(4C) Darwin in Dialogue (Chair: Barri Gold).
Banfield, Marie. ‘Darwin, Paley and the Schoolmen: Natural Selection, Natural Theology, and the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.’
Holmes, John. ‘Visions of Nature: Linnaeus, Darwin and Pre-Raphaelitism in the poetry, prose and sculpture of Jack Tupper.’
Kistler, Jordan. ‘“The Rose Has Overgrown the Bower”; Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s Darwinian Paradise.’
Taylor, Mark. ‘Growth Unbound and Fatal Instinct: Non-Darwinian Evolutionism in D.H. Lawrence’s Transitional Novels The Lost Girl and Aaron’s Rod.’
(4D) Technology and Information (Chair: Jenni Halpin).
de Bourcier, Simon. ‘Textual Self-Reference and Punch-Card Technology.’
Salvey, Courtney. ‘Technology and Literature: Expanding Science and Literature’
Karl, Alissa. ‘Novels, Machines, and the Technocratic Imagination of the 1950s.’
Sandry, Eleanor. ‘Analysing the science and art of communication by considering interactions between humans and machines in Iain M. Banks’ The Player of Games.’
1245-1345 Lunch (included in conference fee)
1345-1500: Plenary Speaker: Professor Jonathan Sawday
1500-1515 Break
1515-1645: Session 5
(5A) Organization and Transmission of Knowledge (Chair: Sharon Ruston).
Thomasen, Laura. ‘Characterising a Microcosmos — Integrating the visual and literary qualities of Robert Hookeís Micrographia.’
Somerset, Richard. ‘“Mutilated wrecks of former ages” and the struggle for narrative form: James Parkinson and the emergence of the popular History of Life.’
Rogers, Hannah Star. ‘The Uses of Seashell Stories: Concology,
Collectors, and Elusive Shells.’
(5B) The Environment (Chair: Martin Willis).
Morris, Kathleen. ‘Le quotidien météorologique, or What Weather Might Report.’
Cordle, Daniel. ‘No Refuge: Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge and Nuclear Criticism After the Cold War.’
Gold, Barri. ‘Sustainable Stories: Human(centered) Nature and the Case of Jane Eyre.’
(5C) Theatre and Science Roundtable
Convenors: Kirsten Shepherd-Barr and Carina Bartleet
Steve Abbott (Middlebury College), ‘Simon McBurney’s Ambitious Pursuit of the Pure Math Play.’
Carina Bartleet (Oxford Brookes University) ‘Science and Ethics in Analogue’s 2401 Objects.’
Liliane Campos (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3), ‘Science in contemporary British drama: a conceptual approach.’
William Demastes (Louisiana State University), ‘The Truth About Outliers: Thinking Through Science and Theatre.’
Jenni Halpin (Savannah State University), ‘The conjunction of the on and off stage technologies of Manula Padmanabhan’s Harvest.’
Anna Harpin (University of Exeter, UK), ‘Acts of Isolation: Staging the Asylum.’
Gyllian Raby (Brock University, CA), ‘Contracting the Audience for post- modern plays inspired by science.’
Naomi Rokotnitz (Bar-Ilan University), ‘Between Faulty Intellects and Failing Bodies: An Economy of Reciprocity in Wit and 33 Variations.’
Nicola Shaughnessy (University of Kent), ‘Perceiving Differently: the Neurodivergent Aesthetic and Contemporary Performance.’
Mike Vanden Heuvel (University of Wisconsin—Madison), ‘”In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that physics must be made to re- enter our minds…”: Intermediality and Science Theatre.’
Tiffany Watt-Smith,(Queen Mary, University of London) ‘The ‘Human Copying Machine’: theatricality and involuntary mimicry.’
(5D)Nation and Knowledge (Chair: Peter Garratt).
Amin, Wahida. ‘Humphry Davy’s Poetry and his European Tours from 1812 to 1820.’
Corriou, Nolwenn. ‘The Victorian Museum : Locus of Possession.’
Machinal, Helene. ‘David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: Medicine and cultural encounters.’
1645-1715 Coffee Break
1715-1845: Session 6
(6A) Hospitals, Doctors, and Laboratories in the Late Nineteenth Century (Chair: Neil Macfarlane).
Watt-Smith, Tiffany. ‘Monkey F’s Flinch: Theatricality and Spectatorship in the Scientific Laboratory, 1881.’
Waddington, Keir. ‘Dying Scientifically: Gothic Romance and London’s Teaching Hospitals.’
Johnsson, Henrik. ‘Strindberg and (Pseudo-)Science.’
(6B) Electric Cities (Chair: Alissa Karl).
Skagen, Margery Vibe. ‘The metaphorics of phosphorescence in Baudelaire’s writing.’
Pratt-Smith, Stella. ‘”An Electrifying Experience”: Electricity, Emotion and Science in the mid Nineteenth-century Novel.’
Ludtke, Laura. ‘Electric illuminants and the landscape of the public and the private in Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day.’
(6C) Teaching Modern(ist) Literature And Science
Roundtable: Elizabeth Micakovic, Peter Middleton, Vike Plock, Michael Whitworth.
(6D) Tracing Scientific Languages (Chair: Laurence Davies).
Evans, Jessica. ‘Medical Language in the Romantic Periodical Press.’
Harris, Tony. “When is antid?”, “What gives Heorot æfenleoht?” and “Why does the woruldcandel rise in the south?” Using astronomy and other sciences to enhance our understanding of early texts.’
Blades, Andrew. ‘Arcane Translucences: AIDS Under the Microscope in James Merrill’s Late Poetry.’
Saturday 14 April 2012
0900-1045 Session 7 [n.b. 105 Minutes]
(7A) Reading Contemporary Fiction and Contemporary Science (Chair: Rachel Crossland)
Christensen, Susie. ‘Scrutinising ‘Neuromania’, Neurology and the Literary.’
Rogers, Janine. ‘Time-Traveling and Trout-Tickling: Cognition and Literary Form in McEwan’s Saturday.’
Gill, Josie. “The Storytelling Animal”: Salman Rushdie and Evolutionary Biology.’
(7B) Representations of the Scientist (Chair: Folkert Degenring).
Maguire, Muireann. ‘Faith in Frogs: The Dangerous Scientist in Turgenev and Bulgakov.’
Schaffeld, Norbert. ‘The Representation of Emergent Scientific Discourses and Modes of Public Control in Contemporary Science Novels.’
Hagen, Margareth. ‘Chemical Autobiographies.’
(7C) Modernity and the State (Chair: Alissa Karl)
Cranfield, Jonathan. ‘Inverting the Quest: Romance, Science and Modernity in the Professor Challenger Narratives.’
Eakin, Peter. ‘Social Organisms: Models of Insect and Human Social Organisation in H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds and When the Sleeper Wakes.’
Goldsmith, Hilary A. ‘Man as Animal: Darwinian Imagery in the Sherlock Holmes Stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.’
Davies, Laurence. ‘Lem, Levi, and the Grandiloquent State.’
1045-1115 Coffee Break
1115-1245 Final Plenary Session: Historicism roundtable
Leah Knight, John Holmes, Sally Shuttleworth, Michael Whitworth, Peter Middleton.
1245-1400: Lunch + BSLS Annual General Meeting
