Centaurus special issue - Electricity and imagination

Edited by Koen Vermeir

"Electricity is taken here as a specific subject for 'science and imagination studies', an inter- and multidsciplinary perspective that takes into account the history of science, medicine and technology as well as literature, theatre studies and dance studies, among other disciplines. The envisioned approach is inclusive, and the sciences are not considered to have a privileged perspective on electricity. Indeed, I question common diffusionist models and I plead for more methodological exchange between disciplinary approaches to electricity. In this special issue, electricity is analyzed both as a concept traversing a diversity of contexts and as a phenomenon that was carefully staged. [...] I show that the experience of electricity and the gendered body are common themes of the special issue and that their study is indeed crucial for understanding 19th century electrical imaginaries."

Contents:

• Koen Vermeir: 'Electricity and Imagination: Post-romantic Electrified Experience and the Gendered Body. An Introduction'
• Paul Gilmore: 'John Neal's Lightning Imagination: Electricity against Romantic Organicism'
• Iwan Rhys Morus: 'No Mere Dream: Material Culture and Electrical Imagination in Late Victorian Britain'
• Ulf Otto: 'Enter Electricity: An Allegory's Stage Appearance between Verité and Varieté'
• Sam Halliday: 'Electricity and Homosexuality: from 19th-century American Sexual Health Literature to D.H. Lawrence'

 Full issue available here.