Next term - astronomers and astronomy

Next term we will be reading about astronomers and astronomy. All the texts are available online; copies will also be placed in the Whipple Library box file. We meet on Mondays from 7.30-9pm in the upstairs seminar room of Darwin College.

All are welcome!

Organised by Daniel Friesner (Science Museum) and Melanie Keene (HPS).

15th October

• Dante Alighieri, Purgatory (c. 1321), Canto 4 (Please select Edition Mandelbaum, Volume Purgatorio, Canto IV)
• John Milton, Paradise Lost (1674), Book 8, lines 1-197

29th October

• Thomas Hardy, Two on a Tower (1882), Chapter 4
  
• George Meredith, "Meditation under stars" (1888)
  

12th November

• Leonid Andreieff, To the Stars (1905), especially Act IV. The most easily available English translation is by A. Goudiss, in Poet Lore, Winter 1907. You can find it by logging on to Periodicals Archive Online, and then searching under author "Andreieff".

26th November

• William Wordsworth, "Star Gazers" (1807)
• Walt Whitman, "When I heard the learn'd astronomer" (1865)
  
• Virginia Woolf, "The Searchlight" (1943)

We hope to see you in October!

Mailing list

A reminder that we have a dedicated email list for the reading group: just let me know if you'd like to sign up!

Michaelmas 2007

Dates for next term's SLRG can now be confirmed as Mondays 15th and 29th October, and 12th and 26th November. We'll be meeting as usual from 7.30-9pm in the upstairs seminar room of Darwin College, and we'll be discussing astronomers and astronomy. More details soon...

BSLS 2008

The Third Conference of the British Society for Literature and Science

Proposals for 20-minute papers are invited for the third annual conference of the British Society for Literature and Science. The conference will be held at Keele University, from 27–29 March 2008. Plenary speakers include Frank Close, OBE (Professor of Physics, Exeter College, Oxford), Steven Connor (Professor of Modern Literature and Theory, Birkbeck College, London), and Helen Small (Fellow in English, Pembroke College, Oxford).

Papers may address topics in the interactions of literature and science in any period and any languages. Presenters need not be based in UK institutions.

We also invite panel proposals for three papers of 20 minutes or four papers of 15 minutes; members of the panel should be drawn from more than one institution.

Please send an abstract of no more than 400 words and a 100-word biographical note (or in the case of a panel, abstracts and notes for each speaker) to bsls@englit.arts.gla.ac.uk, by 30 November 2007. Please send abstracts in the body of messages; do not use attachments. Alternatively, abstracts and proposals may be posted to Dr Sharon Ruston, School of Humanities, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire, ST5 5BG, UK.

Please address any queries to Dr Sharon Ruston at the email or postal address above.