[Grad_history_students] re: Call For Papers

[history]

Please pass along to your graduate students...

 

The Nicholson Center for British Studies at the University of Chicago is
pleased to announce:

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

 

Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain

 

Conference date: Friday, April 7, 2006

Proposal deadline: Friday, January 6, 2006

Submit to: Erin Evans at ele at uchicago.edu.  Call 773-834-3403 for more
information, or visit http://british.uchicago.edu
<http://british.uchicago.edu/> . 

 

Keynote speaker: George Levine, Rutgers University

 

In the early 1800's William Blake issued his declaration of intent "To
cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton," a post-Enlightenment voice of
indignation against the permeation of scientific rationality into
British religious, political, economic, and social life.  Subsequent
nineteenth-century British Romantics, Pre-Raphaelites, and Gothic
Revivalists engaged in a new quest for the "natural" and interest in the
mysterious.  The conflict between empiricism and faith continued as
science (and pseudo-science) progressed, and the latter half of the
century might be described simply as the aftermath of the publication of
Darwin's theory of evolution.  The Victorians grappled with both the
empowering and dehumanizing effects of scientific progress, and
capitalism and empire, products of scientific development, created a
nation which was ostensibly the 'fittest' but fundamentally in crisis.

 

This interdisciplinary conference will engage the question: how did
nineteenth-century British men and women gain or lose 'mastery'-in terms
of both possession of knowledge and dominion or superiority-through
science?  Submissions for papers should discuss science in the Romantic
and Victorian eras throughout the British Empire, especially relating to
the theories, practices, and effects of evolution, medicine, and science
of the mind.  Papers from all relevant disciplines are encouraged,
including the arts, literature, religion, history, philosophy, and race,
gender, and sexuality studies.

 

Please submit an abstract of 400 words or less for a 15-20 minute paper
by January 6, 2006 to Erin Evans at ele at uchicago.edu.  Please include
your name, institution and program, and any A/V needs.  

 

This event is being generously co-sponsored by the Department of English
at the University of Chicago.

 

 

Eva Wilhelm

Administrator

Nicholson Center for British Studies

Judd 325

773-834-3403

ewilhelm at uchicago.edu