We focus on two readings which consider the ways in which ethereal connections were made and discussed in the early twentieth century:
All welcome!
Monday, January 29, 2018
5th February - Connection
We focus on two readings which consider the ways in which ethereal connections were made and discussed in the early twentieth century:
All welcome!
The Peterhouse Theory Group
Our first meeting of Lent term will be 30 January at 17.30 in The Parlour (G Staircase).
Wine and other beverages will be served.
- Sam Kennerley (History): "Collingwood and the Archaeological Approach to History"
- Josh Nall (History and Philosophy of Science): "Escape to Mars? Victorian and modern narratives of a dying planet"
Wine and other beverages will be served.
Thursday, January 25, 2018
2018 Sandars Lectures - 'Chemical Attractions'
By Dr Peter Wothers, Director of Studies in Chemistry at Cambridge.
Held on the 6th, 7th and 8th of March in St Catherine’s College.
Lecture 1; 6th March.
The first lecture looks at how a young teenager first became addicted to collecting antique books on chemistry over 30 years ago. We will look at some of the very first ‘rare’ books purchased, and exactly what the attraction of them was. We will explore some of the other great chemical libraries formed in the past, and their different ‘flavours’ and strengths. We will also discuss how book collecting has changed over the past 30 years, during the age of the internet – a resource not available to the great collectors of the past. Some of the treasures stumbled across during the time collecting will be exhibited and discussed, including a possibly unique broadsheet summarizing one of the first text books of modern chemistry from the beginning of the 17th century.
Lecture 2; 7th March
This second lecture looks at some of the key chemical texts from the 18th century, when modern chemistry really began. We look at how an understanding of the air and the different gases it contains prompted a revolution in chemistry with the introduction of a new nomenclature which is still used today. We look at some of the key texts by authors such as Cavendish, Priestley, Scheele and Lavoisier and how the modern theory and language developed. We will also see how a chance acquisition of an additional item thrown in with a main lot in an auction led to the identification and purchase of an important piece of scientific apparatus. The lecture will include a couple of explosive chemical demonstrations!
Lecture 3; 8th March
In this third and final lecture, we look at some of the earliest books written by women chemists, prior to Madame Curie. Particularly important is Elizabeth Fulhame’s book from 1794: An essay on combustion, with a view to a new art of dying and painting. Also examined are the immensely influential and utterly delightful editions of Jane Marcet’s Conversations on Chemistry published between 1806 and 1853. This book takes the form of informal dialogues, or conversations, between the teacher, Mrs Bryan, and her two young students, Caroline and Emily. We will also look at other books written for younger audiences and some of the dangerous experiments they encouraged their readers to try out.
Further information here.
Held on the 6th, 7th and 8th of March in St Catherine’s College.
Lecture 1; 6th March.
The first lecture looks at how a young teenager first became addicted to collecting antique books on chemistry over 30 years ago. We will look at some of the very first ‘rare’ books purchased, and exactly what the attraction of them was. We will explore some of the other great chemical libraries formed in the past, and their different ‘flavours’ and strengths. We will also discuss how book collecting has changed over the past 30 years, during the age of the internet – a resource not available to the great collectors of the past. Some of the treasures stumbled across during the time collecting will be exhibited and discussed, including a possibly unique broadsheet summarizing one of the first text books of modern chemistry from the beginning of the 17th century.
Lecture 2; 7th March
This second lecture looks at some of the key chemical texts from the 18th century, when modern chemistry really began. We look at how an understanding of the air and the different gases it contains prompted a revolution in chemistry with the introduction of a new nomenclature which is still used today. We look at some of the key texts by authors such as Cavendish, Priestley, Scheele and Lavoisier and how the modern theory and language developed. We will also see how a chance acquisition of an additional item thrown in with a main lot in an auction led to the identification and purchase of an important piece of scientific apparatus. The lecture will include a couple of explosive chemical demonstrations!
Lecture 3; 8th March
In this third and final lecture, we look at some of the earliest books written by women chemists, prior to Madame Curie. Particularly important is Elizabeth Fulhame’s book from 1794: An essay on combustion, with a view to a new art of dying and painting. Also examined are the immensely influential and utterly delightful editions of Jane Marcet’s Conversations on Chemistry published between 1806 and 1853. This book takes the form of informal dialogues, or conversations, between the teacher, Mrs Bryan, and her two young students, Caroline and Emily. We will also look at other books written for younger audiences and some of the dangerous experiments they encouraged their readers to try out.
Further information here.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Landscapes Below Speaker Series
Milstein Seminar Rooms, University Library
Thursday 25 January, 17.30-18.30
THE WONDERS OF THE PEAK: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY GEO-TOURISM IN DERBYSHIRE
Anna Rhodes, Collections Officer at Buxton Museum & Art Gallery
In 1636 Thomas Hobbes published his topographical and satirical poem The Wonders of the Peak. This popular verse described visiting some of Derbyshire's geological wonders, including limestone caverns and natural wells. Hobbes' poem publicised this landscape and by the eighteenth century, these sites were teeming with visitors. Descriptions and engravings of the sites were published in magazines and they attracted artists including Joseph Farrington, Philip James De Loutherbourg and William Gilpin. This talk explores how these geological 'wonders' were represented on both paper and canvas in the eighteenth-century. It draws on many unpublished travel journals, examining how the visitors engaged with the geological landscape. These often sensationalised descriptions, written by both men and women contain tales of perilous adventure, eerie visions into other worlds and the stirrings of modern geology.
Further information, and a link to book tickets, here.
Future events:
All details and booking information can be found here.
Thursday 25 January, 17.30-18.30
THE WONDERS OF THE PEAK: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY GEO-TOURISM IN DERBYSHIRE
Anna Rhodes, Collections Officer at Buxton Museum & Art Gallery
In 1636 Thomas Hobbes published his topographical and satirical poem The Wonders of the Peak. This popular verse described visiting some of Derbyshire's geological wonders, including limestone caverns and natural wells. Hobbes' poem publicised this landscape and by the eighteenth century, these sites were teeming with visitors. Descriptions and engravings of the sites were published in magazines and they attracted artists including Joseph Farrington, Philip James De Loutherbourg and William Gilpin. This talk explores how these geological 'wonders' were represented on both paper and canvas in the eighteenth-century. It draws on many unpublished travel journals, examining how the visitors engaged with the geological landscape. These often sensationalised descriptions, written by both men and women contain tales of perilous adventure, eerie visions into other worlds and the stirrings of modern geology.
Further information, and a link to book tickets, here.
Future events:
- 'The Role of Women in the History of Geology' - Tuesday 20 February
- 'George Cumberland, fossil collecting and landscape painting in early 19th century Bristol' - Thursday 22 March
All details and booking information can be found here.
Thursday, January 18, 2018
Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network: Narratives and Artificial Intelligence
23 January 2018, 5-7pm
CRASSH, Alison Richards Building, SG1
Chair: Satinder Gill (CIPN)
The AI Narratives project at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence examines how we talk and think about AI, and considers the impact this could have on how it is regarded, developed, and regulated, highlighting the role of humanities research in technological development.
1. Stephen Cave: Hopes and Fears for AI: Four Dichotomies
Rarely has a technology arrived more pre-loaded with associations than the intelligent machine. We categorise those associations into four dichotomies of hopes and fears:
- Ease / Obsolescence
- Dominance / Subjugation
- Gratification / Alienation
- Immortality / Inhumanity
Stephen Cave is Executive Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Philosophy, and Fellow of Hughes Hall, at the University of Cambridge. Stephen earned a PhD in philosophy from Cambridge, then joined the British Foreign Office, where he spent a decade as a policy advisor and diplomat. His research interests currently focus on the nature, portrayal and governance of AI.
2. Sarah Dillon: Displaying Gender
This paper will take a brief interdisciplinary and intersectorial look at the displaying and enacting of gender in artificial intelligence technology and the narratives surrounding.
Films: Ex Machina, Conceiving Ada.
Novels: M. John Harrison's Empty Space.
Sarah Dillon is University Lecturer in Literature and Film in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge. She is author of The Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory (2007) and Deconstruction, Feminism, Film (2018). Sarah is a Senior Research Fellow at CFI, where she is co-Project Lead on the AI Narratives project, with the Royal Society. Sarah is a public advocate for the importance of the Arts and Humanities and broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4.
3. Kanta Dihal: Personhood
Personhood has been attributed to objects from cars to computers to the Berlin Wall; the latter has even been married. At the same time, some humans have been denied personhood. This talk will explore the issue of personhood in the age of artificial intelligence, with the two robot figures of Sophia and Pepper as key protagonists... or objects of investigation.
TV series and films: Humans (UK)/Real Humans (Sweden); Ex Machina;
Kanta Dihal is the Postdoctoral Research Assistant on the AI Narratives project, and the Research Project Coordinator of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. In her research she explores the public understanding of AI as constructed by fictional and nonfictional narratives. She has recently submitted her DPhil thesis in science communication at the University of Oxford, titled 'The Stories of Quantum Physics.
4. Beth Singler: AI and Film
Dr Beth Singler will talk about the series of four short documentaries she is making on AI and robotics at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, with help from the CFI, Arm, and Little Dragon Films. She will show the first half of Pain in the Machine, the first in the series and the winner of the 2017 AHRC Best Research Film of the Year award. She will discuss how the dissemination of accounts of artificial intelligence can rely on dominant narratives and she will reflect on science, fiction, her films, and their role in public engagement.
Pain in the Machine
Beth Singler is the Research Associate on the "Human Identity in an age of Nearly-Human Machines" project at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, where she is exploring the social and religious implications of advances in Artificial Intelligence and robotics. As an associate research fellow at the CFI she is collaborating on the Narratives of AI project, which is running in partnership with the Royal Society. Beth is an experienced social and digital anthropologist.
Chair: Satinder Gill
Satinder is a Research Affiliate with the Music Faculty, based with the Centre for Music and Science. She is author of Tacit Engagement: Beyond Interaction (2015), editor of a forthcoming book on The Relational Interface: Where Art, Science, and Technology Meet (2018), and member of the Editorial Board of the AI & Society Journal since its establishment in 1987.
To join the CIPN mailing list, subscribe here; to post events relating to the concept of performance to the CIPN mailing list, email here.
CRASSH, Alison Richards Building, SG1
Chair: Satinder Gill (CIPN)
The AI Narratives project at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence examines how we talk and think about AI, and considers the impact this could have on how it is regarded, developed, and regulated, highlighting the role of humanities research in technological development.
1. Stephen Cave: Hopes and Fears for AI: Four Dichotomies
Rarely has a technology arrived more pre-loaded with associations than the intelligent machine. We categorise those associations into four dichotomies of hopes and fears:
- Ease / Obsolescence
- Dominance / Subjugation
- Gratification / Alienation
- Immortality / Inhumanity
Stephen Cave is Executive Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Philosophy, and Fellow of Hughes Hall, at the University of Cambridge. Stephen earned a PhD in philosophy from Cambridge, then joined the British Foreign Office, where he spent a decade as a policy advisor and diplomat. His research interests currently focus on the nature, portrayal and governance of AI.
2. Sarah Dillon: Displaying Gender
This paper will take a brief interdisciplinary and intersectorial look at the displaying and enacting of gender in artificial intelligence technology and the narratives surrounding.
Films: Ex Machina, Conceiving Ada.
Novels: M. John Harrison's Empty Space.
Sarah Dillon is University Lecturer in Literature and Film in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge. She is author of The Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory (2007) and Deconstruction, Feminism, Film (2018). Sarah is a Senior Research Fellow at CFI, where she is co-Project Lead on the AI Narratives project, with the Royal Society. Sarah is a public advocate for the importance of the Arts and Humanities and broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4.
3. Kanta Dihal: Personhood
Personhood has been attributed to objects from cars to computers to the Berlin Wall; the latter has even been married. At the same time, some humans have been denied personhood. This talk will explore the issue of personhood in the age of artificial intelligence, with the two robot figures of Sophia and Pepper as key protagonists... or objects of investigation.
TV series and films: Humans (UK)/Real Humans (Sweden); Ex Machina;
Kanta Dihal is the Postdoctoral Research Assistant on the AI Narratives project, and the Research Project Coordinator of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. In her research she explores the public understanding of AI as constructed by fictional and nonfictional narratives. She has recently submitted her DPhil thesis in science communication at the University of Oxford, titled 'The Stories of Quantum Physics.
4. Beth Singler: AI and Film
Dr Beth Singler will talk about the series of four short documentaries she is making on AI and robotics at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, with help from the CFI, Arm, and Little Dragon Films. She will show the first half of Pain in the Machine, the first in the series and the winner of the 2017 AHRC Best Research Film of the Year award. She will discuss how the dissemination of accounts of artificial intelligence can rely on dominant narratives and she will reflect on science, fiction, her films, and their role in public engagement.
Pain in the Machine
Beth Singler is the Research Associate on the "Human Identity in an age of Nearly-Human Machines" project at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, where she is exploring the social and religious implications of advances in Artificial Intelligence and robotics. As an associate research fellow at the CFI she is collaborating on the Narratives of AI project, which is running in partnership with the Royal Society. Beth is an experienced social and digital anthropologist.
Chair: Satinder Gill
Satinder is a Research Affiliate with the Music Faculty, based with the Centre for Music and Science. She is author of Tacit Engagement: Beyond Interaction (2015), editor of a forthcoming book on The Relational Interface: Where Art, Science, and Technology Meet (2018), and member of the Editorial Board of the AI & Society Journal since its establishment in 1987.
To join the CIPN mailing list, subscribe here; to post events relating to the concept of performance to the CIPN mailing list, email here.
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
22nd January - Imagination
Our aethereal explorations begin with a discussion of two classic works of science and literature:
All welcome!
Conference - Remembering James Petiver (1665-1718)
26th April 2018
The Linnean Society of London
Registration Now Open - see here
This day meeting marks the tercentenary of the death of James Petiver FRS, an important but often overlooked professional apothecary and compulsive natural historian in 18th-century London. Petiver made significant contributions to multiple fields of natural history, above all botany and entomology. An assiduous correspondent and collector, he successfully cultivated sources of natural historical intelligence and material from the Americas to the East Indies.
Speakers will assess Petiver's life and legacy by deploying a range of historical and scientific disciplinary perspectives. On the 300th anniversary of his death, the meeting will set out to remember James Petiver:
• as a practising natural historian of substantial abilities and merit
• as a collector and cataloguer of natural historical specimens with enduring significance
• as a writer of both manuscript correspondence and published natural historical texts
• as an apothecary whose professional and private scientific interests mutually informed each other
• as a social networker both within London and across the globe
• as an historical figure whose legacy has been contested and which is ripe for reconsideration
Speakers: Dr Arnold Hunt, Dr Charles E Jarvis FLS, Sebestian Kroupa, Dr Alice Marples, Katrina Maydom, Professor Kathleen S Murphy, Dr Victoria Pickering, Professor Richard Vane-Wright FLS. Respondent: Dr Emma Spary.
Organisers: Richard Coulton, Charlie Jarvis.
The Linnean Society of London
Registration Now Open - see here
This day meeting marks the tercentenary of the death of James Petiver FRS, an important but often overlooked professional apothecary and compulsive natural historian in 18th-century London. Petiver made significant contributions to multiple fields of natural history, above all botany and entomology. An assiduous correspondent and collector, he successfully cultivated sources of natural historical intelligence and material from the Americas to the East Indies.
Speakers will assess Petiver's life and legacy by deploying a range of historical and scientific disciplinary perspectives. On the 300th anniversary of his death, the meeting will set out to remember James Petiver:
• as a practising natural historian of substantial abilities and merit
• as a collector and cataloguer of natural historical specimens with enduring significance
• as a writer of both manuscript correspondence and published natural historical texts
• as an apothecary whose professional and private scientific interests mutually informed each other
• as a social networker both within London and across the globe
• as an historical figure whose legacy has been contested and which is ripe for reconsideration
Speakers: Dr Arnold Hunt, Dr Charles E Jarvis FLS, Sebestian Kroupa, Dr Alice Marples, Katrina Maydom, Professor Kathleen S Murphy, Dr Victoria Pickering, Professor Richard Vane-Wright FLS. Respondent: Dr Emma Spary.
Organisers: Richard Coulton, Charlie Jarvis.
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Twentieth-Century Think Tank - 'Ether: The Multiple Lives of a Resilient Concept'
Jaume Navarro (University of the Basque Country), Thursday 18th January
In
this session I propose to discuss the text of the introduction to a
collective volume on the ether in the early twentieth century soon to be
published by Oxford University Press. This book is a snapshot of
the ether qua epistemic object in the early twentieth century. The
contributed papers show that the ether was not necessarily regarded as
the residue of old-fashioned science, but often as one of the objects of
modernity, hand in hand with the electron, radioactivity or X-rays.
Instrumental was the emergence of wireless technologies and radio
broadcasting, certainly a very modern technology, which brought the
ether into social audiences that would otherwise have never heard about
such an esoteric entity. Following the prestige of scientists
like Oliver Lodge and Arthur Eddington as popularisers of science, the
ether became common currency among the general educated public.
Modernism in the arts was also fond of the ether in the early twentieth
century: the values of modernism found in the complexities and
contradictions of modern physics such as wireless action or
wave-particle puzzles a fertile ground for the development of new
artistic languages; in literature as much as in the pictorial
and performing arts.
The question of what was
meant by "ether" (or "aether") in the early twentieth century at the
scientific and cultural levels is also central to this volume.
The essays in this volume display a complex array of meanings that will
help elucidate the uses of the ether before its purported abandonment.
Rather than thinking of the ether as simply a name that remained popular
among several publics, this book shows the complexities of an epistemic
object that saw, in the early twentieth century, the last episode in
the long tradition of stretching its meaning and uses.
Please contact Richard Staley if you would like a copy of the Introduction.
The Think Tank meets from 1-2pm
Seminar Room 2
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
Free School Lane
Cambridge
CB2 3RH
CFP - Victorian Interdisciplinarity
Durham University, 12 May 2018
CfP Deadline: 1 March 2018
Hosts: Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies & Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies
Organising Committee: Rosemary Mitchell, Efram Sera-Shriar (Leeds Trinity University); Bennett Zon (Durham University); Helen Kingstone (University of Glasgow)
Keynote speaker: Gowan Dawson (University of Leicester)
The Victorian Interdisciplinarity project combines expertise at Durham and Leeds Trinity to build upon a current project called Victorian Culture and the Origin of Disciplines, led by cultural historian Bennett Zon (Durham) and historian of science Bernard Lightman (York University, Canada). Begun at Durham's Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, that project explores the factors underpinning the coalescence of modern disciplines, while problematizing conventional notions of disciplinary crystallization and exposing deep channels of interdisciplinary interaction.
Led by a combination of scholars at Durham and Leeds Trinity, including cultural historians Helen Kingstone and Rosemary Mitchell, historian of science Efram Sera-Shriar and Bennett Zon, Victorian Interdisciplinarity extends this project by magnifying focus on the dynamics of interdisciplinary interaction in the formation and promulgation of individual disciplines. It tests the nature of Victorian Britain's interdisciplinary project by probing mutual implications in the genesis of arts and sciences, including hard and soft sciences, social sciences, humanities and performative arts. These topics are reflected in a series of three main events comprising two separate workshops: Victorian Disciplinarity and the Arts (Saturday 25 November 2017, Durham); Victorian Disciplinarity and the Sciences (Friday 23 February 2018, Leeds Trinity); and an international conference (Saturday 12 May 2018, Durham). Related events are also being planned, including a CNCS workshop and guest lecture led by Bernard Lightman, and activities at Leeds Trinity.
According to Joe Moran ''interdisciplinarity' provides a democratic, dynamic and co-operative alternative to the old-fashioned, inward-looking and cliquish nature of disciplines. And yet this straightforward interpretation begs a number of questions: how exactly does interdisciplinary research aspire to be warm, mutually developing, consultative? Can disciplinary divisions be so easily broken down or transcended? Is it not inevitable that there should be some means of ordering and structuring knowledge?' (Interdisciplinarity, 2011)
This project seeks to probe the ways Victorian ordered and structured knowledge by viewing their intellectual landscape as non-disciplinary. Testing modern disciplinary and interdisciplinary configurations of professional disciplinary coalescence, Victorian Interdisciplinarity draws upon the methodology underpinning Peter's Bowler's transformative concept of the non-Darwin revolution. While Bowler argues that Victorian evolutionary ideas failed to produce crystalized ideological hegemonies, Victorian Interdisciplinarity proffers a transformative disciplinary landscape in constant flux – effectively a non-disciplinary revolution.
Within discussions of interdisciplinarity the Arts and Science have tended to reflect C.P. Snow's dichotomous concept of Two Cultures. This project synthesises rather than separates our methodological insights to produce a holistic and comprehensive understanding of Victorian interdisciplinarity.
Individual Proposal abstracts for a single speaker (20 minutes + 10 discussion) should be 350 words and clearly describe the argument, evidence, and research findings, situate the work in relation to previous scholarship, and articulate how the research contributes to research into Victorian interdisciplinary.
Panel Proposal abstracts for 3 speakers (1 ½ hours) or 4 speakers (2 hours) should be 350 words and provide an outline of the main argument, evidence, and research findings of the panel, as well as situating the panel's work in relation to previous scholarship and articulating how the research contributes to research into Victorian interdisciplinary. The panel organizer should also include an individual proposal abstract for each paper following the guidelines for Individual Proposals, along with each panelist's contact information. Panel Proposals will be considered only as a whole, the session's coherence being an essential part of the evaluation process.
Submission information
Please send your proposals as Word documents to cncs@durham.ac.uk no later than 1 March 2018. The following format should be used:
Name, affiliation (if applicable) and contact details (postal address, email and phone)
Type of presentation (individual or panel)
Abstract title
Audio-visual and other requirements (the following are available: Data projector or large plasma screen; Desktop PC; VGA, HDMI and 3.5mm audio inputs; CD player; DVD player; Visualiser; Piano)
Brief biography (150 words)
CfP Deadline: 1 March 2018
Hosts: Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies & Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies
Organising Committee: Rosemary Mitchell, Efram Sera-Shriar (Leeds Trinity University); Bennett Zon (Durham University); Helen Kingstone (University of Glasgow)
Keynote speaker: Gowan Dawson (University of Leicester)
The Victorian Interdisciplinarity project combines expertise at Durham and Leeds Trinity to build upon a current project called Victorian Culture and the Origin of Disciplines, led by cultural historian Bennett Zon (Durham) and historian of science Bernard Lightman (York University, Canada). Begun at Durham's Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, that project explores the factors underpinning the coalescence of modern disciplines, while problematizing conventional notions of disciplinary crystallization and exposing deep channels of interdisciplinary interaction.
Led by a combination of scholars at Durham and Leeds Trinity, including cultural historians Helen Kingstone and Rosemary Mitchell, historian of science Efram Sera-Shriar and Bennett Zon, Victorian Interdisciplinarity extends this project by magnifying focus on the dynamics of interdisciplinary interaction in the formation and promulgation of individual disciplines. It tests the nature of Victorian Britain's interdisciplinary project by probing mutual implications in the genesis of arts and sciences, including hard and soft sciences, social sciences, humanities and performative arts. These topics are reflected in a series of three main events comprising two separate workshops: Victorian Disciplinarity and the Arts (Saturday 25 November 2017, Durham); Victorian Disciplinarity and the Sciences (Friday 23 February 2018, Leeds Trinity); and an international conference (Saturday 12 May 2018, Durham). Related events are also being planned, including a CNCS workshop and guest lecture led by Bernard Lightman, and activities at Leeds Trinity.
According to Joe Moran ''interdisciplinarity' provides a democratic, dynamic and co-operative alternative to the old-fashioned, inward-looking and cliquish nature of disciplines. And yet this straightforward interpretation begs a number of questions: how exactly does interdisciplinary research aspire to be warm, mutually developing, consultative? Can disciplinary divisions be so easily broken down or transcended? Is it not inevitable that there should be some means of ordering and structuring knowledge?' (Interdisciplinarity, 2011)
This project seeks to probe the ways Victorian ordered and structured knowledge by viewing their intellectual landscape as non-disciplinary. Testing modern disciplinary and interdisciplinary configurations of professional disciplinary coalescence, Victorian Interdisciplinarity draws upon the methodology underpinning Peter's Bowler's transformative concept of the non-Darwin revolution. While Bowler argues that Victorian evolutionary ideas failed to produce crystalized ideological hegemonies, Victorian Interdisciplinarity proffers a transformative disciplinary landscape in constant flux – effectively a non-disciplinary revolution.
Within discussions of interdisciplinarity the Arts and Science have tended to reflect C.P. Snow's dichotomous concept of Two Cultures. This project synthesises rather than separates our methodological insights to produce a holistic and comprehensive understanding of Victorian interdisciplinarity.
- How was Victorian knowledge organized – is it disciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, or even non-disciplinary?
- Is interdisciplinarity a legitimate concept to apply to Victorian disciplinary interrelationships? What were the politics of disciplinary borders, and how did they facilitate/impede interdisciplinarity?
- What were the processes, practices, mechanisms, discourses, and publication modes of Victorian interdisciplinarity?
- What role did individuals and networks (such as learned societies) play in the coalescence of Victorian interdisciplinarity?
- What were the counter-trends working against disciplinary formations, and what caused them – eg. tensions between elite and popular practitioners and forms, or peripheral/provincial v. central locations; issues of gender, class, and ethnicity/race; religion; rural and urban; colonial, imperial and global/transnational dimensions of knowledge?
- How can studying Victorian interdisciplinary help to inform the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity for us today?
Individual Proposal abstracts for a single speaker (20 minutes + 10 discussion) should be 350 words and clearly describe the argument, evidence, and research findings, situate the work in relation to previous scholarship, and articulate how the research contributes to research into Victorian interdisciplinary.
Panel Proposal abstracts for 3 speakers (1 ½ hours) or 4 speakers (2 hours) should be 350 words and provide an outline of the main argument, evidence, and research findings of the panel, as well as situating the panel's work in relation to previous scholarship and articulating how the research contributes to research into Victorian interdisciplinary. The panel organizer should also include an individual proposal abstract for each paper following the guidelines for Individual Proposals, along with each panelist's contact information. Panel Proposals will be considered only as a whole, the session's coherence being an essential part of the evaluation process.
Submission information
Please send your proposals as Word documents to cncs@durham.ac.uk no later than 1 March 2018. The following format should be used:
Name, affiliation (if applicable) and contact details (postal address, email and phone)
Type of presentation (individual or panel)
Abstract title
Audio-visual and other requirements (the following are available: Data projector or large plasma screen; Desktop PC; VGA, HDMI and 3.5mm audio inputs; CD player; DVD player; Visualiser; Piano)
Brief biography (150 words)
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