On 6 September 2014, University College London hosts a new
Science and Literature Festival organised by
The Memory Network: ‘Memory in the
twenty-first century’, featuring, in conversation:
- Ian McEwan & Paul Bloom (Yale, USA)
- Suzanne Corkin (MIT, USA) & Hugo Spiers (UCL)
- Maud Casey, Timothy J. Jarvis & Sebastian Groes (Roehampton)
- Anna Stothard & Jason Tougaw (CUNY, USA)
- Naomi Alderman & Jessica Bland (Nesta)
The Memory Network is a research networking organisation funded by
the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Wellcome Trust,
bringing scientists, scholars and writers together to think about memory
in new, twenty-first century contexts.
In association with The Guardian, The Memory Network is organising a
festival at which writers discuss the relationship between storytelling
and memory in dialogue with a neuroscientist, technology futures
specialist, and a neuro-literary critic. How does the digital
environment change our memory and storytelling? Can you tell a story via
objects? In what ways is psychiatry dependent on fictional narratives?
How can we turn the life of an amnesiac man into a story worth
remembering? These and many other questions will be debated, whilst
neuropsychologist Paul Bloom will interrogate one of the finest, and
most provocative, contemporary writers who throughout his career has
sought to realign the fraught relationship between literature and
science: Ian McEwan.
The literary festival is held in the Gustave Tuck lecture theatre at
UCL, starts at 12.30. The programme finishes at 6pm. Entry is free but
seats must be reserved by sending an email to
memorynetwork@roehampton.ac.uk.
