‘Slashing through our millennial gloom’ – Futurists prickling the English

To celebrate the founding manifesto of Futurism in 1909 we invite you to an interactive exhibition that brings the sounds, sights and sensations of the era to life. Here you may borrow from the Futurists in your own style: using caution or abandon as you shoot at popular culture in a Vorticist game of space invaders, manipulate sounds of the city to create a new sonata, deform words into wriggling poetic scores, produce updated manifestos for the year 2009 and even participate in a Futurist performance at the end of the afternoon.

Featuring the spectacular Dutch dada performer chacha who will present a selection of sound poetry at 3pm.

Everyone is welcome to attend this interactive exhibition on Saturday 24 October, in the Recital Hall at Anglia Ruskin University (East Road, Cambridge), from 1-4pm. Suitable for all ages.

Please call 0845 196 3826 or email festivalbookings@anglia.ac.uk to book your FREE place.

19th October

Our first meeting of term will be held from 7.30-9pm in room 119 in the Mary Allan Building, Homerton College, Hills Road, Cambridge.

We begin our readings on analogy with a classic piece by Pierre Duhem, a photocopy of which is available in the Group boxfile in the Whipple Library.

Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, trans. Philip P. Wiener (Princeton University Press, 1954), chapter IV (pp. 55-104), "Abstract theories and mechanical models".

All are welcome!

Wellcome workshop - Medicine and Literature

1st December, 2-3pm, Wellcome Library, London

Whether you're interested in Love in the Time of Cholera or scaling The Magic Mountain, this workshop will help you explore the relationship between medicine and literature, through the resources of the Wellcome Library.

To book see here.

Talk - Poems of Space

10^th November, 19:00-20:45, National Maritime Museum Lecture Theatre, £8

Renowned astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell explores the connections between poetry and science and her experience of compiling Dark Matter, an anthology of poems inspired by astronomy. Followed by a discussion with poet Kelley Swain (Darwin’s Microscope) and astronomer/writer Dr Pippa Goldschmidt. Futher details here.

Tickets from the NMM Bookings Office: 020 8312 6608, bookings@nmm.ac.uk

Journal of Literature and Science - Vol II out now

The second volume of the Journal of Literature and Science has now been published.
This issue contains articles on:

The ichthyosaurus and its representations by JOHN GLENDENING
Hoffmann's motifs of physical movement by VAL SCULLION
The sonnet and geometry by MATTHEW CHIASSON & JANINE ROGERS

Additionally there are reviews of recent journal articles by Laura Voracheck,
Anna Henchman, Mandy Reid and Danielle Coriale.

The JLS is online and free to access and can be found here.


The JLS is now accepting submissions for articles, and reviews of
recent journal articles for future issues. Please make any enquiries with the
Editor-in-Chief, Martin Willis, on mwillis@glam.ac.uk.

Oxford Literature and Science Seminar - Michaelmas 2009

Hawkins Room, Fellows' Quad, staircase 3
Merton College

Friday 30 October (3rd week), 2pm
Professor David Amigoni (Keele): ‘Charles Darwin’s centenary and the politics and poetics of parenting: inheritance, variation, and the aesthetic legacy of Samuel Butler’

Friday 27 November (7th week), 2pm
Dr John Holmes (Reading): ‘Darwinism in Victorian Poetry’

PhD studentships in ‘Internationalisation of Literature and Science since the Early Modern Period’

Application deadline: 15/11/2008

The PhD-Net “Internationalisation of Literature and Science since the Early Modern Period” is a bi-national PhD programme run collaboratively by King’s College London and the University of Stuttgart, which aims to forge interdisciplinary connections between various subjects in the Humanities (German Studies, English Studies, Comparative Literature, Philosophy, and the Histories of Medicine, Science and Technology). Partner institutions in Germany include the German Literature Archive in Marbach and the Institute for the History of Medicine of the Robert Bosch Foundation.

An international research group will support and connect projects which address both inter- and trans-national tendencies within the Humanities. Projects will develop both theoretical models for the as yet under-researched area of internationalisation within the Humanities, as well as critically assess historical case studies from the early modern period onwards, which address the role of exchange movements and networks and the transfer of topics, practices and methods in literature and science. Of particular interest is the relevance of literature(s) for the internationalisation of the sciences, alongside critical reflections on the significance of the presentation and the mediality of knowledge (language, text, image) for its circulation, communication and implementation.

For further info, including application procedure, please click here or contact Ben Schofield (benedict.schofield@kcl.ac.uk).

Cambridge Literary Review

The first issue of the Cambridge Literary Review is now available: orders can be made online via the website.

Issue #1 includes:

Poetry & fiction from:
Richard Berengarten, Emily Critchley, Debora Greger, John James, Justin Katko & Jow Lindsay, John Kinsella, Charles Lambert, Tom Lowenstein, Helen Macdonald, John Matthias, Anna Mendelssohn, Marianne Morris, Ian Patterson, J.H. Prynne, Peter Riley, Luke Roberts, Avery Slater, Rosie Šnajdr, Josh Stanley, Keston Sutherland, Timothy Thornton, and John Wilkinson.

Essays:
Raymond Geuss, 'Vix intellegitur'
Stefan Collini, 'Understanding and judgement in the humanities'
Rebecca Stott, 'Tangling with history'
Philip Pettit on the Cambridge Review

Feature: On Cambridge Poetry
Jeremy Noel-Tod, 'A History of Difficulty: On Cambridge Poetry'
Andrew Duncan introducing Charles Madge's 'The Storming of the Brain' (1950)
Peter Riley introducing a selection of poems by Raymond Crump
Elaine Feinstein on Prospect
Richard Berengarten on the 1975 Cambridge Poetry Festival
Gareth Farmer on Veronica Forrest-Thomson
John Hall on Douglas Oliver's 'Arrondissements'
Rod Mengham on Andrew Crozier's 'Free Running Bitch'
Christina McLeish on Roger Langley and Nigel Wheale
Robert Archambeau, 'Public Faces In Private Places: Messianic Privacy in Cambridge Poetry'
Marianne Morris 'On Disorder'

Steampunk Art @ Oxford

The Oxford Museum of the History of Science has a new Steampunk exhibition opening on 13th October. See the exhibition blog here, the special edition of Broad Sheet here, and details of planned events here.

BSLS Book Prize 2009

The British Society for Literature and Science is pleased to invite nominations for the annual BSLS Book Prize. The prize of £150 will be awarded to the best book published in English in 2009 in the field of literature and science. Monographs, edited volumes, editions and books of creative writing are all eligible for consideration, excepting books wholly or partly written by members of the BSLS executive.

Please send nominations, giving the author, title and publisher, to Dr John Holmes (book-prize convenor) at j.r.holmes@reading.ac.uk, with 'BSLS Book Prize' as the subject heading. The deadline for receipt of nominations is 16 January 2009.

* The book prize was launched in 2007. The past winners are Ralph O'Connor for 'The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856' (University of Chicago Press, 2007) and George Levine for 'Realism, Ethics and Secularism: Essays on Victorian Literature and Science' (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

* Nominations are invited from BSLS members and from publishers. The authors or editors of the nominated books need not be BSLS members. BSLS members are welcome to nominate their own books.

* The book must have 2009 as its publication date.

* The winner of this year's prize will be announced at the fifth annual conference of the BSLS in April 2010 at Northumbria University.

* The prize will be paid by means of a cheque made out in pounds sterling.