An online symposium organised by the University of Birmingham (Birmingham, UK, and Dubai, UAE) and the Commission on Science and Literature (DHST/IUHPST)
Thursday 2 November 2023
Two of the designated themes for COP28, to be hosted by UAE in November and December 2023, are a ‘Just Energy Transition’ and ‘Youth, Education and Skills’. Science is fundamental to our understanding of climate change, while technology will have a key role to play in addressing it. At the same time, Arts and Humanities subjects such as literature have a vital contribution to make. Literary studies can help to foster empathy with those on the front line in the climate crisis, to process emotional responses to the changes happening to our world, to focus attention on the value of nature and our part within it, and to imagine the sustainable future we need to create together.
This online symposium aims to bring together early career scholars and research students from around the world to present case studies showing how research and education in literature can contribute to a just transition to a sustainable future. We welcome presentations on fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama in any language and from all cultures. The papers themselves should be presented in English and should be 10 minutes long, with or without slides.
The symposium will be hosted jointly by Prof John Holmes in Birmingham and Dr Niveen Kassem in Dubai. If you would like to present a paper, please send a 150-word proposal in English together with a 50-word biography to j.holmes.1@bham.ac.uk by Friday 1 September. We are particularly keen to hear from academics within five years of qualifying, postdoctoral researchers, and PhD and MA students. In preparing the programme, we will prioritise the representation of different regions and nationalities together with gender parity, as well as assessing the quality of the proposals themselves.
Space in Time is a forum for new work in the long and global cultural history of the space beyond Earth, from the ancient heavens to modern outer space. While space history is a vibrant field of study, extending across the humanities and social sciences, it often breaks down along familiar geographical, disciplinary, and period-based boundaries. In particular, the field’s predominant interest remains in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, especially following what is now increasingly referred to as the First Space Age. However, while outer space undeniably gains in interest in this period, this interest is preceded and underwritten by a cross-cultural history stretching as far back as the human imagination itself, much of it yet to be written.
Please send an abstract (up to 500 words) and abbreviated CV (2 pages) to spaceintime.conference@gmail.com by 31 May 2023, with an indication of whether you wish to attend in person or online. Please direct any inquiries, including about financial support, to the same address.
Communicatiοn of Science and Literature in the multiverse
Aegina, Aegina Island, Greece July 3-5, 2023
The International Commission on Science and Literature DHST/IUHPST, The Municipality of Aegina, The Association of the Greek Physicists Society, The Science, Technology and Medicine Laboratory of the School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University, The Institute of Historical Research, National Hellenic Research Foundation, The Chair of Science, Technology and Gender Studies, Friedrich-Alexander University, and the Department of Sociology of the University of Athens organize a three-day workshop to study the Communication of Science and Literature in the multiverse.
We invite paper proposals including a title, an abstract of 300 words (max.), name, and affiliation of the author, as well as contact information. The presentation time will be 20 minutes with 10 additional minutes for discussion. The conference language is English. There will be a modest fee of 70 Euros for covering organizational expenses.
Please send your proposals to gvlahakis@yahoo.com by May 31, 2023. Acknowledge of acceptance by June 10, 2023.
30 August – 1 September 2023, University of Liverpool
Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Brycchan Carey, Nandini Das, Caroline Edwards, Graeme MacDonald, Chris Pak, Craig Santos Perez.
The 2023 conference for the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, UK and Ireland (ASLE-UKI) will be hosted by the Literature and Science Hub at the University of Liverpool. ASLE-UKI welcomes participation from scholars, readers, and creative practitioners interested in the relationships between literatures, environments and cultures – past, present, or future from anywhere in the world. The theme of the 2023 conference is “Transitions“.
Please submit proposals via the following links. Include contact details, brief bios, and an abstract of up to 300 words by 1st June 2023.
When Ronald Ross discovered the protozoan responsible for malaria in 1897, he wrote a poem addressing “million-murdering Death” whose “cunning seeds” he had found. Ross’s poem remains famous, but how has his hope that art and science would walk “hand in hand” fared in the following centuries? Over the 20th century, microscopy was revolutionised by UV, phase contrast, and electron technology. The circulation of microscopic images increased exponentially with the arrival of television, internet and digital photography. While visualisations of atomic physics were influential for modernist writers, genetic engineering and microbial agency have become key ingredients of 21st-century crime fiction and science fiction, as well as inspirations for ecopoetry, molecular poetics and experiments in living poetry. This symposium aims to identify the microscopic imaginaries that appeared over this period, and the turning points that structured literature’s engagement with microscopy. We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers in English, on any written literary genre, particularly around the following topics:
- the epistemic dimensions of literary form
- the aesthetics of scale
- the role of literature in changing scopic regimes
- ethical and political dimensions of microscopic imaginaries
- conceptual shifts provoked by microscopic perspectives, around notions such as community, agency, subject, or environment
- relations between microscopic imaginaries and movements such as modernism, naturalism or new materialism
- authorial postures and reader expectations created by microscopic perspectives
- relations between scientific imagination, popular science imagination and literary imagination
- how scientific and literary discourses have shaped each other over this period
Answers will be sent out by the 9th of June. The symposium will be held at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, Maison de la Recherche, 4 rue des Irlandais, in Paris.
A second symposium will be organized in 2024 on microscopic imaginaries in theatre and performance: a separate call for papers will be issued for that event.
The societies invite papers on all forms and genres of science fiction and the fantastic in relation to the paradigm of disruption, including but not limited to literature, music, film, games, design, and art. Presentations may be held either in English or German. They strive for a diversity of voices and perspectives from any and all disciplines and career stages. While papers on any subject in SFF are welcome, they especially encourage topics that resonate with the overall conference theme and that engage disruptive imaginations along axes that include but are not limited to:
SFF imagination under conditions of disruption, e.g., energy crisis; toxicity; climate disruption; war; colonialism; dis/ability and ableism; trauma; white supremacy
SFF imagination against disruption, e.g., resilience; worldmaking; utopia; decolonization and restitution; cultural healing; kinship; critical and co-futurisms (African and Afro-futurisms, Indigenous Futurisms, Queer and Trans Futurisms, Crip Futurisms, LatinX Futurisms,…)
SFF imagination in need of disruption, e.g., SFF and systems of oppression; the energy unsconious of SFF; transhumanism and eugenics; SFF tropes/histories/conventions of white supremacy, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and technological solutionism
SFF imagination as a force of disruption, e.g., SFF in/as activism; emancipatory forms of SFF publishing (e.g., Destroy! Series); the cultural/bodily/social/political/aesthetic/ecological impact of SFF; SFF as medium of political subversion and agitation; alt-right utilization of SFF rhetoric
SFF imagination of disruption, e.g., ruptures of space and time; geoengineering; gene editing; hacking; revolution; border crossings, unsettling of hierarchies, chimeras and hybrids, creative technologies and alternative communication media
Proposal for individual presentations, panels, or non-traditional formats (roundtable, artistic research, participatory formats, etc.) are welcome, in English or German. For individual presentation, we ask for an abstract of 300 words and a short bio (150 words). For preformed panels we require a proposal (single file) that includes a 300 word summary of the panel topic, abstracts of 200 words for each contribution, and bio notes (150 words) for all participants. Please send all submissions to disruptive.imaginations@tu-dresden.de by March 1, 2023. Options for limited hybrid participation will be available. More information will be supplied soon on our conference website www.disruptiveimaginations.com.
Both organizations give out a limited number of travel grants to help students, PhD candidates and non-tenured participants with their expenses: SFRA members are eligible to apply for travel grants of up to 500$; the GfF offers four travel grants of 250€ each, membership not required. Please indicate your interest upon submitting your abstract.
Theatre about Science: Theory and Practice 9-11 November, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Following the fantastic meeting we had last year, we invite you to meet again in Coimbra next year, for the Theatre About Science Conference 2023.
We welcome contributions ranging from the performing arts to the communication of science, and of diverse nature - from academic to practical research and performance. We also welcome contributions exploring connections of theatre with formal, natural, health and social sciences. We encourage participants from all over the globe, with the aim of mapping and expanding the network of people working in this interdisciplinary field.
You can find more detailed information, as well as submit your proposals, in the following link: www.theatreaboutscience.com
We issue two calls for this year’s TAPRA conference: an open call inviting proposals that might help us map the vast terrain encompassed by ‘performance and science’; and a themed call for a joint session with the Bodies and Performance working group. Both calls are intended as an initial scoping exercise for the Routledge Companion to Performance and Science, which is currently in development. We will consider proposals for the following formats
· Papers, including those with performative elements (10-20 minutes).
· Low tech workshops, installations, demonstrations or performance (up to 60 minutes).
· Curated panels (usually 3 x 20 min papers)
Open Call Since its inception, our working group has defined its remit inclusively. This means embracing a wide range of performance practices that interface with scientific knowledge and the social, political, ethical and personal repercussions of these: science plays, bio-art, public engagement projects, performance art and more. We have also considered scientific approaches to understanding what performance is or does, and, reciprocally, analysed scientific practices through the lens of performance. Given this broad remit, how can we define the borders of our field and delineate its contents? How might we understand the overlaps, splices, tensions, alliances, antimonies, resonances that constitute the interface between performance and science, as practices, disciplinary domains, cultures and truth claims? Your proposal might posit conceptual tools for surveying or rethinking the field(s), trace strands within it and/or offer case studies and specimens. Alternatively, your proposal might interrogate – or rebel against – such projects of taxonomization and territorialisation. In all cases, preference is given to proposals that foreground the material practices of ‘doing’ performance and science – whatever form this takes. Themes may include but are not limited to:
· historiographies, genealogies, cartographies and case studies of performance and science
· defining, distinguishing and defying disciplines: multi-, cross-, inter-, intra-, trans- and post-disciplinarity
· the politics of science-performance collaboration
Negative Affects We are also holding a joint session aligning with the Bodies and Performance WG theme of Negative Affects, Performance and Bodies and that of our own interim event on human repair, regeneration and bodily alteration. We invite proposals that engage with the body and bad feelings, and how scientific discourses and technologies of repair, replacement and augmentation might alleviate or exacerbate those negative feelings. Submitting a proposal Please send a 300-word (max.) proposal and a short biography in a Word document via email. Please also include precise details of your resourcing needs, for example, any audio-visual technology, or a particular type of space (e.g. drama studio) that you will need to make your presentation. Email abstracts and information to the Working Group conveners, Alex Mermikides and Paul Johnson, at perfandscience@tapra.org The deadline for the submission of proposals is Monday 8th April 2019.Early Career Researchers Bursary Scheme: If you are an Early Career Researcher, then you are eligible to be considered for a TaPRA ECR Bursary. Please follow this link for more information, and please indicate on your proposal whether you fit the criteria and wish to be considered for the bursary scheme: http://tapra.org/bursaries/Postgraduate Bursary Scheme: There will be a separate call for PG Bursaries later in the year, but please do indicate in your proposal whether you are planning on applying to the scheme.
Please note: only one proposal may be submitted for a TaPRA event. It is not permitted to submit multiple proposals or submit the same proposal to several Calls for Participation. All presenters must be TaPRA members, i.e. registered for the event; this includes presentations given by Skype or other media broadcast even where the presenter may not physically attend the event venue.
Science and Performance Working Group Interim Event call for participants
The Performance & Science Working Group invites applications to attend our Interim Event at King’s College London, which takes up the theme of bodily regeneration, repair and replacement. The emerging sciences of regenerative medicine promise the possibility of combating terrifying disease and physical trauma. They also sharpen our fears about cyborg and synthetic beings. This ambivalence offers rich ground for performance-makers and those who study the interface between theatre, performance and the human sciences.
The event involves meetings with scientists at the cutting edge of regenerative medicine, a tour of the laboratories at the Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine and of the Spare Parts exhibition, a working dinner and attending a related science-performance.
The event is FREE to all TAPRA members but places are limited. To apply for a place, please email perfandscience@tapra.org by 12 April 2019 with a brief (100 word) outline of how the event will support your current or future research. Priority will be given to those whose research aligns most closely with the event. Postgraduate students can also apply for support with travel costs – please include estimated costs in your email. The criteria for funding will be lack of institutional support, alignment of research interest to the event, cost of travel.
All participants must be TaPRA members. If you are not currently a member, you will be asked to join the organization at the interim rate of £15 before the date of the event.
2-4pm: visit to Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
4- 5.30 pm: tour of the Spare Parts exhibition at the Science Gallery. This exhibition explores the art, science, ethics and technology that enables human repair and alteration. It considers the emotional and psychological aspects of living with a replacement organ or limb; organic or engineered.
5.45-6.45pm: working dinner: reflecting on performances of bodily repair, replacement and recuperation.
7 – 8.30: performance: New Organs of Creation
New Organs of Creation presents a hypothetical development of the human larynx (voice box), using tissue engineering, to extend the ability of the voice as a transformational instrument. The project is made in collaboration with Prof Lucy Di-Silvio who used tissue engineering to grow human cells on the prototype anatomical larynx.
The logic of the virus has become endemic. Viral ads mirror contagion to convey their message. Computers and systems are struck down by infections. Pigs and birds are transformed into sinister hosts. Terrorists form cells and virulent covert networks, globalisation becomes a creeping homogenisation attacking the idiosyncratic, and media rapidly evolve to overcome any censorial attempt at information immunisation.
We all live with the virus. Or perhaps, as the planet’s most abundant biological entity, the virus lives with us. It crosses boundaries of species and holds genotype in little regard, finding hosts in every form of life. This tenacious agent has escaped the confines of laboratories and medical institutions, and insinuated itself into all strands of our cultural, political, and technological discourses.
Excursions invites submissions that examine the theme of ‘Virus’, in all its potential interpretations. Submissions may wish to consider, but are by no means limited to:
• The virus as a model and/or metaphor
• The politics and economics of the pandemic, epidemic and endemic
• Viral dissemination
• The synthetic and the viral
• The viral and systemic vulnerability
• The socio-cultural and scientific history of the virus
• Life, death and the place of the virus in evolution
• Bacteriophages or the good virus
• Contamination and the text/body/performance
• Parasitism vs. viral infection
• Viral hosts and hospitality
• The rhetoric of the virus/viral rhetoric
• Artistic (re)presentations of/responses to virulent virtual media
• What does immunity mean?
• Viral identities – from living with infection to infectious trends
• The antiseptic space
Papers should be between 3,000 and 5,000 words, follow MHRA formatting guidelines and be submitted via the Excursions website. Please contact enquiries@excursions-journal.org.uk regarding other forms of submission (i.e. film, photography, poetry etc). Please include an abstract and a brief biography (no more than 150 words) along with your submission, not later than 30th October 2010.
Looking back on the End of Time — Modernism and Beyond
University of East Anglia, UK
Keynote Speakers: Prof. Randall Stevenson (University of Edinburgh) and Dr
Bryony Randall (University of Glasgow)
At the turn of the twentieth century developments in the sciences and
technology seemed to necessitate a radical review of the nature, perhaps
even the existence, of time. This interdisciplinary conference will look
at ways in which key figures from this period conceptualised and
represented these changes, and at how this period has been represented
since. Papers will range from the history of science to philosophy and
literature. Further details on the conference website.
The British Society for Literature and Science is a scholarly society which promotes interdisciplinary research into the relationships of science and literature in all periods.
Membership is open to anyone interested in the field, regardless of geographical location.
