Primo Levi's 'The Periodic Table' on Radio 4

Dramatization starting tomorrow at 9.45am - link here.

Next term - Fire

Our meetings for Michaelmas Term 2016 will be themed around 'Fire', giving us the opportunity to discuss everything from ancient elements to far-flung suns, pottery to passion, experimental practice and hellfire. Watch out for the full schedule later on this summer; and email Melanie if you have a burning desire to add anything to the reading list!

Meanwhile, enjoy these playlists of music about fire:

• Classical
• Songs

A summer of Sayers

This summer some members of the Reading Group are starting a book club, and everyone is most welcome to join us! We will be reading works by Dorothy L. Sayers, starting with her Strong Poison, and thinking more about detection, chemistry, and expertise in fiction.

Further details (including the date) to follow, but meetings will be held as usual at Darwin College. Email Melanie if you are interested in participating.

Recap - Frogs

F is for Frog, in Walter Crane's Absurd A.B.C.

The final two sessions of term saw participants explore the human and poetic dimensions of frog-related literature, from Beatrix Potter to Seamus Heaney. We thought about changing fashions in taxidermy (including its hipster revival), and the repurposing of traditional tales and songs for different eras, whether Randolph Caldecott's picturebook or Bob Dylan's folk song cover. We discussed in detail the particular appeal of animals in children's stories; and how their anthropomorphism can help accentuate specific attributes, but also create some bizarre situations (since when did a frog need to shave?). We looked at how familiar myths and songs were reworked with more hopeful or sinister undertones; how frogs were used as symbols of both ambition and futility; how frogs could be part of an induction into the world of natural historical practice; and how the cartoonish depictions of juvenile fiction belied the disquieting threat of their slimy, amphibious nature.

Speaking of cartoonish depictions, several of us also met for an additional event: a screening of Disney's version of The Princess and the Frog, accompanied by suitable New Orleans cuisine. The ideal end to the term!

Many connections to our term's discussions were found when viewing Disney's The Princess and the Frog.

Thanks as ever to all participants in our conversations over the past few months, and especially to Charissa, superlative co-organiser. I'll never look at a frog or a toad the same way again...

A recent visitor to our garden.

Anniversary

10 years since our first post - how time has flown!

Victorian insects - blog

An essay by Franziska Kohlt about how nineteenth century Britain became obsessed with insects is online here in honour of National Insect Week. (We missed Save the Frogs Day...)

New book - Staging Science

Staging Science: Scientific Performance on Street, Stage and Screen has recently been published by Palgrave Macmillan's 'Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine' series (see here for the full list), including a contribution from former Reading Group member Kirsten Shepherd-Barr on '"Unmediated" Science Plays: Seeing What Sticks':

Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr examines contemporary science theatre, with particular attention paid to interdisciplinary and experimental theatre emerging across Europe. These dramas reveal, Shepherd-Barr argues, that it is the process of working towards a piece of theatre rather than the finished product that is of greatest interest, both to audiences and to the theatre-makers themselves. Such theatrical performances invite extensive participation in meaning-making amongst all of those involved, including a range of scientific consultants. In conclusion, Shepherd-Barr reads these new dramas as extensively interdisciplinary and co-produced, leading to a new form of productively entangled epistemological experience.

Pictorial recap - 13th June

13th June - Poetic frogs

Our final evening of scientific and literary fun with frogs will combine a discussion of the following poems with our end-of-term party. We'll meet in the Newnham Grange Seminar Room at Homerton College from 7.30-9pm. See you then!

• Christina Rossetti, ‘A Frog’s Fate’ (1885).
• Robert Graves, ‘The Frog and the Golden Ball’ (1965).
• Seamus Heaney, ‘Death of a Naturalist’ (1966).

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.