‘Moving
Towards Science in the Long Nineteenth Century’:
Postgraduate Symposium
12
September 2012,
The Literary and Philosophical Society,
Newcastle upon Tyne.
Guest
speakers:
Professor Jennifer Richards and Dr Anne
Whitehead (Newcastle University), Professor David Knight (Durham University),
and Dr Peter Garratt (Northumbria University)
The North East Postgraduate Research Group
for the Long Nineteenth Century (NENC) invites proposals for a one-day
postgraduate symposium held on Wednesday 12 September 2012.
The theme of the symposium reflects two
parallel ‘moves’ towards science. First, it references the rise of the ‘natural
sciences’, the scientific method, and the professional scientist across the
long nineteenth century. Second, it recognises moves in contemporary arts and
humanities scholarship towards a more nuanced disciplinary relationship with
the sciences and the possibility of ‘one culture’. Adopting an exploratory methodology, the day
will allow postgraduate delegates to think widely about how literary culture of
the period approached, adapted, and rejected emergent scientific,
technological, and medical discourses and methods. More broadly, we will
consider how and why literature and science might move together in the
contemporary academy.
Ranging across the early modern period to
the end of the long nineteenth century in their areas of specialisation, our
guest speakers will consider in particular how they have approached or made use
of scientific discourses in their own research. This will provide delegates
with an opportunity to gain insight into some of the methodological and
theoretical benefits and challenges of a turn towards science. Accordingly, we
invite proposals from postgraduates for papers which broadly consider ‘moves’
towards science in the literature of the long nineteenth century, or in
contemporary approaches to nineteenth-century literature.
Possible topics could include, but are not
limited to:
- Defining science then and now: shifting
linguistic terms
- Science in the public arena: the role of
institutions in shaping relations between literature and science
- The popularisation of science through
literary forms: prose, poetry, periodical, and pamphlet
- Reading in new ways: approaching the
scientific text across disciplinary lines
- Specialisation and the figure of the
professional scientist
- Evolution: approaches, responses, reactions
- Developing narratives: the Enlightenment,
discovery, invention
- Science in literary forms and the literary
form of science
- Medicine and the burgeoning medical
industry
- Science at the margins: gender, class,
race, and geography
- The collaboration of scientific and
literary circles
- Science and anxiety: resistance to
scientific ideas in literature
- The rise of psychology and theories of the
mind
- Pseudoscience and quackery: authenticity,
belief, demonstration, and revelation
Abstracts of 250 words for 20-minute papers
should be submitted to movingtowardsscience@gmail.com by 30 July 2012.
The symposium is being generously supported
by the British Society for Literature and Science (BSLS) and by the three host
Universities (Newcastle, Durham, and Northumbria). The day will therefore be
free to attend, and we are delighted to be able to offer a number of
postgraduate travel bursaries.
Please indicate in your abstract if you
would like to be considered for a bursary.
Posts
The full programme is available for download from the
website. A list of confirmed panels and speakers is to be found at the base of
this email. You’ll see an excellent line up of speakers from across the UK,
North America and Australia. John
MacKenzie will provide the keynote lecture: ‘All the Empire’s a Stage:
the Context and Performance of Imperialism’. (Emeritus of Lancaster, Edinburgh
etc). He is author of Propaganda and
Empire, Imperialism and Popular Culture and series editor of Manchester
University Press’ Studies in Imperialism. Jane
Pritchard (Victoria and Albert Museum) will deliver a special session
which includes the exhibition of early film footage highlighting dance
practice. The conference includes papers from academics working in the fields
of theatre history/performance studies, Victorian literature, cultural history
and museum studies. Cengage is sponsoring a special session on digital archives
and Victorian Studies.
