Michaelmas 2013 Programme

Fridays, 2pm, weeks 3 and 5, Seminar Room A
English Faculty, St Cross Building, Manor Road, Oxford 

Week 3, 2pm (Friday 1 November) Dr Andrew Mangham (Reading), '"The Bar of Science": Charles Dickens, G. H. Lewes and the Spontaneous Combustion of Mr Krook.'

Week 5, 2pm (Friday 15 November) Dr Cathryn Setz (St Anne's College), 'Stone Age Science: Contra-Darwinian Discourse in Modernist Magazines.'

Week 7, 2pm (Friday 29 November) (No speaker confirmed at present, but we're still hoping to book one.)

In Hilary Term 2014 we plan to have sessions on 7 February and 7 March 2014, with papers by Will Abberley and Daniel McCann; the usual slot in 5th week (21 February) clashes with a proposed workshop on the ether organised by Jaume Navarro, so there won't be a session on that day. In Trinity Term 2014 we hope to have a paper by Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, and others as yet to be invited. If you are interested in giving a paper, please contact Michael Whitworth.

Convenors: Dr Michael Whitworth (Merton) Dr Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (St Catz)

Michaelmas 2012 Programme

Professor Sharon Ruston (Salford): ‘'Romanticism, the Sublime, and Science' (9 November 2012).

Michaelmas Term 2011 programme

University of Oxford
Faculty of English Language and Literature
Literature and Science Seminar

Fridays, 2pm, weeks 3, 5, 7, Seminar Room B (formerly room 10), English Faculty, St Cross Building, Manor Road

Week 3, 2pm (Friday 28 October)
Dr Michael Whitworth (Merton College/English Faculty, Oxford): ‘"Strange Synthetic Perfumes": Investigating Scientific Diction in Twentieth-Century Poetry'.

Week 5, 2pm (Friday 11 November)
Professor Rebecca Stott (UEA): 'The Surrealism of Everyday Life: Elizabeth Bishop and Charles Darwin'.

Week 7, 2pm (Friday 25 November)
Dr Emily T. Troscianko (St John's College, Oxford):'Science and the study of literature'


Convenors: Dr Michael Whitworth (Merton)
Dr Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (St Catz)

Trinity Term 2011 Programme

University of Oxford
Faculty of English Language and Literature
Literature and Science Seminar

Fridays, w

eeks 2 and 3, 2pm, Room 11, English Faculty, St Cross Building, Manor Road.

Week 2, 2pm. (Friday 13 May)

Professor Peter Middleton (Southampton).

"Poetry, Physics, and the Scientific Attitude at Mid-Century"

Week 3, 2pm (Friday 20 May)

Professor Steve Abbott (Middlebury)

"The Dramatic Life of Alan Turing".

Future Plans

The seminar is taking a break in Hilary Term 2011, but will return in Trinity Term. In the meantime, we are pleased to see that Bruno Latour's 'Compositionist Manifesto' has now appeared in print, in New Literary History: http://newliteraryhistory.org/articles/41-3-Latour.pdf

Michaelmas Term 2010 programme

University of Oxford
Faculty of English Language and Literature
Literature and Science Seminar

Fridays, Hawkins Room, Merton College

(Weeks 3, 5, & 7)

Please note variable start time

Week 3, 3.30pm (29 Oct.)

Dr Martin Willis (Glamorgan): 'Popular Astronomy and

Popular Fiction: Mars and Its Genres'.

Week 5, 2pm (12 Nov.)

Dr Helena Ifill (Sheffield): 'Nature vs. Nurture in the

Victorian Sensation Novel'.

Week 7, 2pm (26 Nov.)

Graduate Forum: Ed Sugden (Linacre College, Oxford) 'Myriads of Ages and Thick-Strewn Celestial Areas': Figurations of Newton in Emerson, Poe and Melville', and David Shackleton (St Catz, Oxford),

‘Geological Fragments and the Ruins of Time: H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine’.

Convenors: Dr Michael Whitworth (Merton)

Dr Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (St Catz)

Trinity Term 2010 Programme

University of Oxford
Faculty of English Language and Literature
Literature and Science Seminar

Please note the different days, times, and venues for each week’s session

Professor Sally Shuttleworth (University of Oxford), ‘Childhood Sexuality and the Victorian Novel.’
Friday 30 April 2010, 3.30pm.
English Faculty, St Cross Building, Room 10.

Professor Bruno Latour (Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris), ‘A Compositionist Manifesto.’
Wednesday 12 May 2010, 5.30pm.
English Faculty, St Cross Building, Lecture Theatre 2.

Graduate Forum: Stella Pratt-Smith (University of Oxford), ‘Mind over Matter: From Sensation to Precision in Nineteenth-Century Representations of Electricity’.
Will Tattersdill (King’s College, London), ‘Two Sides of the Same Page: Science and Fiction in the Late Victorian Periodical.’
Friday 28 May 2010, 2pm.
English Faculty, St Cross Building, Room 10.

Convenors: Dr Kirsten Shepherd-Barr and Dr Michael Whitworth