Dear blog,

First, an apology, apparently all of the filming that was done at St Deiniol’s has not been saved properly (I like the fact that I’m using the passive tense here when really the only person to blame is me) and so none of the wonderful presentations that were filmed will be appearing on the social space. Perhaps some people are grateful for that but I’m still very sorry for being technically incompetant. I really need to find out how to do this properly for the next event. We do though have some of the presentations captured and soon the amazing Cristina da Costa will be transforming the website learning resources page into a page that has real resources, with links to presentations, reading lists, and evaluations, etc. The website was always intended to be a learning resource that survived and was useful beyond the two-year life of this training programme and the new resources page shows how this can be achieved.

A new development on the social space that I’d like to draw your attention to is the appearance of Scott Brewster’s audio and text of his talk, which he would have given at St Deiniol’s had he not been prevented to by snow. I’d very much like people to read and/or listen to this 25 minute talk and discuss ideas raised on the discussion group set up to accompany it. It’s remarkably generous of Scott to offer the text of his paper, particularly since it is a work-in-progress (as yet without footnotes!). It’s the beginnings of a book that he is writing and he’s told me that he’d very much like to hear what people think. Scott’s sabbatical from the University of Salford (and from his job as Director of our Subject Group) begins today and he has time now to work on the book. I thought it would be interesting to see how academics begin monograph projects even if the topic isn’t right in your area. That said, I think the issues raised in Scott’s talk are really very pertinent to LitSciMed no matter what your historical period or subject.

So, this week has been good. There’s been much marking and preparation for the start of the new semester. I had an interesting and hopefully very successful meeting to talk about the University’s archives, which you can find out more about here: http://www.ils.salford.ac.uk/library/resources/special/. We need to bring more people’s attention to these since they are underused at present, but there are some real gems, particularly relating to Salford’s industrial heritage of which we are rightly very proud. We have treasures like the Walter Greenwood collection (he wrote Love on the Dole) and the Duke of Bridgewater’s archive (the ‘Canal Duke’), as well as some very fun things, such as Richard Badnall’s eccentric idea of the ‘undulating railway’: http://www.ils.salford.ac.uk/library/resources/special/badnall.xml. This collection charts Badnall’s invention from 1832-4 which seems to posit that trains could work better if they followed an undulating path (rather like our roller coasters today). The idea was clearly taken seriously by Robert and George Stephenson and patents were taken out, though he was attacked in The Mechanics Magazine. I’m sure there’s an academic article in this for someone…

Finally, following the Wellcome money and the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry grant (http://www.ambix.org/), this week we’ve been awarded an internal University of Salford grant too. This will also be used for the Calendar of the Letters of Humphry – first we’ll pay for the creation of a database in which to enter letters (and which will be online and searchable, accessible to all), and then pay for the copytyping of letters into this database. It’s all very exciting.

Remember – the deadline for applications for event 2 is Monday (1st February). I can report that there are 18 applications at the moment so there are still places!

Best,

Sharon

Dear blog,

Well, it’s hard to believe that two weeks ago was the end of our week in St Deiniol’s and that a week ago we held the Literature, Culture and Science research cluster symposium. I have still only had 13 of the 20 evaluations for the St Deiniol’s event so please do fill out the online evaluation form (the link is in my previous blog post) as soon as possible. I also haven’t seen everyone’s reflective diaries and we need this from all participants so do send them in to me please.

One reason that I need the evaluations is because we’re now deep in our plans for event 2. The deadline for applications is coming up fast on 1st February. I can reveal that we’ve already received 14 applications for only 20 places. We’re intending to add to the programme over the coming days, partly in response to some of the things said in students’ evaluations of the first event. While this will be quite a different thing — we won’t all be staying in the same amazing house for example — I’m making every effort to ensure that there is time for student discussions. I’m hope that all student participants will come to dinner together at a local restaurant on day 1 and day 2 for example. More on this soon, but keep an eye out on the programme http://www.litscimed.org.uk/page/event2_programme to see how this changes.

I’m also hoping to book rooms for students who live more than an hour away from the venues involved (King’s College, London, the Wellcome Library, and the Royal College of Surgeons) in the same hotel. Whether we’re able to do this though will depend partly on how many students need this accommodation so I can’t say that this will happen for certain yet. We have got a brilliant programme lined up though, with some great speakers, and interesting topics for discussion, and I’m sure it will be lots of fun. There will be student presentations again, though this time they will be tied to something (whether its a text, picture, film, object, etc etc) that has caught your attention over the three day event. Again, responding to comments in the evaluations I shall make sure to create a list of student participants, their institutional affiliation and topic of their PhD thesis, so that everyone knows who everyone else is.

The symposium at the University of Salford went brilliantly last Friday I thought. We had a massively diverse range of papers, all of which showcased the interesting work going on within the deliberately loose title of ‘Literature, Culture and Science’. We heard from Kate Adams on experiential theatrical performance, Peter Buse on how it has changed his understanding of Polaroid to take pictures himself, Susan Oliver on the way that medical debates about using vaccinations were played out in the periodicals of America, and many others. In fact we were able to film many of the presentations and I’m hoping to upload these onto this social space so that people can hear them too.

Finally, it’s been a good week for the Collected Letters of Humphry Davy and his Circle week, after we heard that we’ve been awarded £5000 from the Wellcome Trust and £1000 from the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry to begin the copytyping of the letters we have in typescript and visiting archives to transcribe more letters. We’re waiting to hear about other grant applications but this is a good start, and means we can start moving on this project. The first stage is to produce a Calendar of Letters which will be published on the Royal Institution’s website and only then will be sure of the full extent of the whole project. I still can’t believe well over half of the 900+ letters we now know about have never been published and I hope that this fact is sufficient to persuade funders to invest in our efforts!

Sharon

Dear blog,

It’s been really great to spend the evening reading over others’ blogs. I do hope that people continue to write these even after they’ve finished their reflective diaries. I think a blog could be really useful when you’re writing a PhD thesis. It might help organise your thoughts, help you decide what you think about a writer or an article or idea, and encourage networking and collaboration between peers working in similar areas. For the meantime it’s just really wonderful to read in such detail about the event last week, what people thought about sessions and tasks, and how it has made them reflect upon their own work.

It was a magical week; I keep telling people who ask me about it that this was probably the best class that I’ll ever get to teach, twenty PhD students from around the country, all bright and enthusiastic and willing to read and learn. I think I’ve been spoiled too! I really hope that the friendships that people made over the week continue and that together we form a new collaborative group, ready to discuss important developments in our field, solve knotty theoretical problems, and offer constructive suggestions and advice to each other. The photos are up on Flickr (I hope it’s ok that the photos you took have gone up Paul?), some of the slideshows are on slideshare, and the films will soon be edited by Cristina and uploaded onto our YouTube channel. We’ll let you know when this is done.

If you haven’t already done so, please send in evaluation forms to me (you can email if that’s easier), and please send reflective diaries (in whatever form) by Friday 15th Jan if possible. I’d also really like to know how you’d like to use the social space. Cristina and I have some ideas – pre- and post-event discussions, interviews with relevant critics, virtual conferences, online tasks – but I’d really like to hear about how you would like to use the space. Please let me know.

The Literature, Culture and Science research cluster at Salford is having a symposium on Friday (the programme is available at http://www.espach.salford.ac.uk/cms/news/article/?id=20). We have 17 confirmed participants now, which isn’t bad for what began as an internal event. I will be testing out some ideas for my session at the Royal College of Surgeons in March in my paper, but generally it will showcase the work being done in the litscimed area by University of Salford staff. I’m hoping that we may be able to capture some of it for the social space, particularly Scott Brewster’s session which was going to be similar to that we missed because of snow last week.

Finally, the programme is already online (http://www.litscimed.org.uk/page/event2_programme) for event 2 to be held at the Wellcome Library, King’s College, London, and the Royal College of Surgeons from 25-27 March. Applications are due in on Monday 8th February and we should let the successful applicants know by Monday 8th February.

More soon,

Sharon

Dear blog,

Well, I’m sitting in the common room blogging while the fire burns and others are blogging in the same room. It’s been another great day despite the changes to the programme, and we are on our final evening in St Deiniol’s before our trip to Manchester tomorrow. Let’s hope that the coach can get through the snow to reach us tomorrow morning.

This morning we had the final five presentations from our students, starting with Colin Baker. I learned that no less than 479 medical journals were launched during the C19th, and these have been unfairly neglected by critics and treated as passive ‘mirrors’ of the medical culture of the time. Colin is determined to look at these journals as an ‘active presence within Victorian society’ and I’m really looking forward to seeing the results of his study. Andrew Nightingale was next with a thoroughly enjoyable presentation on his project, a creative study of the Turing Test. The possibilities suggested were really fascinating; Andrew considered the many things he could put in the place of the machine (such as non-human animals and monsters, Mr Punch and the golem) in such an intelligence test. Rachel Russell’s PhD project asks how we understood and treated nausea and vomitting in the C19th. With particular case studies on morning sickness and seasickness, Rachel intends to look at diaries, letters and magazines, and showed some hilarious attempts to treat seasickness, such as a belt to keep the stomach in and a chair to correct the movement of the ship. Sophie Rutland is looking at a subject which is close to my own area of research interest. She’s examining the work of David Hartley, philosopher and medic, whose theory of nerve vibration was so important for the Romantic poets. Concentrating on women writers, Sophie’s work will consider how scientific theories of vitality are synthesised with religious ideas of faith. Finally Samantha Briggs gave a fascinating talk on her project, on marriage and anthropology in Hardy and Eliot. She is alive to the ways that ideas of marriage have changed over time, and intrigued by the fact that in Hardy’s novels, such as Jude, some of the characters who survive have the most pragmatic impression of marriage suggesting that the need to adapt in marriage may be a key notion taken from evolution.

Gowan Dawson gave an excellent plenary lecture, presenting the very detailed and meticulous work he has done on Richard Owen’s serialised science writing and comparing it to the novel serialisation of Owen’s good friend Dickens. Positioning this work as a corrective to the idea that the C19th was ‘Darwin’s Century’ and looking instead at suggestive relationships between literary forms and scientific writing, Gowan used his impressive book history research to map Owen’s reading of Dickens and Thackeray and suggest ways that this reading may have informed his science. The idea of constructing a whole from a part, which Owen famously managed when he reconstructed the dinornis, was likened to the adaptations of Dickens novels for the stage which apparently were staged before the series had even been published, but also to the experience of reading a novel.

Finally, David Amigoni led a workshop on ‘Literary Darwinism’ which caused much animated response. While there was general agreement in the room concerning how people felt about the theory there was much interesting debate about the ideas presented. There was a feeling that the perception of the humanities put forward was outdated and caricatured, that engaging with the debate meant that literary critics had to do so in the terms of the literary Darwinists, and that the science on which is was founded was ‘bad science’. All this was done in a measured and articulate, very polite way, but nonetheless opinions were firm.

Here’s to a most successful week so far with an exciting day ahead of us tomorrow.

Sharon

Dear blog,

Another great day over, and one that I expected to miss because I was supposed to be at the north-west long C19th seminar in Manchester. Due to the snow the seminar has been cancelled so I was able to be here all day and listen to more of the student presentations.

Martin Willis’s session on Literature and Science this morning was excellent – he offered a survey of the ‘essential’ criticism on literature and science, which the students analysed in groups. Beginning with the first chapter of Gillian Beer’s Darwin’s Plot’s (1983) we talked about Beer’s emphasis on the fictive and linguistic nature of science, her stress on narrative, and the dominance of the discipline of English in her thought. Moving to George Levine’s introduction to One Culture (1987), we saw a shift to the history of science, considered his idea that both science and literature belonged to a single culture, sharing common ground and the same social context. Then we looked at Beer’s essay ‘Translation or Transformation’ first published in 1989 and of the same post-structuralist era as the previous two pieces, but here the concept of ‘creative misprision’ was even more explicit and considerations of genre were more clear. Gowan Dawson’s 2006 survey ‘Literature and Science under the Microscope’ was next examined, and students noticed that Gowan redresses the disciplinary balance, encouraging a ‘contextualising’ approach rather than Levine’s ‘one culture’. Finally the students had great fun making me feel uncomfortable by discussing my introduction to ‘Literature and Science’ from 2008, upbraiding me for my improper definition of cultural history but also seeing a topical focus on ideas of ‘truth’ and epistomology. It was excruciating to have my work critiqued while I was in the room but also very helpful.

The student presentations were of the same high standard as in previous nights. Jamie Stark kicked things off with a description of his study of ‘La Maladie de Bradford’ or Anthrax from 1878-1919. Anthrax was contracted by woolsorters (and others, though it was always known as the woolsorter’s disease) from the fleeces imported from abroad. I was amazed to learn that Homer had mentioned anthrax in the Illiad, especially when thinking that it was very differently represented in the 2001 attacks. Jeff Wolf’s project looks at why the notion of the mind replaces that of the body at the end of the C18th and particularly at the way that Scottish Enlightenment figures considerd the relationship between the mind and body. Sarah Crofton talked about the character of the occult detective or psychical researcher in supernatural stories. I was intrigued to hear of the desire for a ‘proper form of science’ to be applied to such activities as the seance, and that founding members of the Society for Psychical Research formed in 1882 included a doctor and a Professor of Physics. Wahida Amin is looking at the ‘Romantic chemist’ Humphry Davy’s manuscript poetry to see how this fits his scientific legacy. She hopes to reassess the term ‘Romantic’ so that it incorporates science and literature using Davy as precisely this kind of bridging figure. Grace Farrington’s PhD is being completed in association with The Reader, an organisation that arranged reading groups as a form of therapy. She aims to produce materials that could be used in such sessions and is trying to find a theoretical foundation for the claim that reading makes people feel better.

All in all, another great day, with much to think about. Unfortunately Scott Brewster can’t make it for his 9am session tomorrow because of the snow and we’re uncertain about whether Gowan will be able to get here either. The students assure me that they’ve worked hard enough so far and will appreciate a little more leisure time than was originally planned. If these sessions don’t go ahead we will run something on the social space though, so watch this space…

Sharon

Dear Blog,

Well, the snow has come as promised and we are officially snowed in. Taxis are refusing to pick people up from St Deiniol’s and the place looks like a picture postcard, quite like the picture on the website in fact: http://www.st-deiniols.com/. The students have been making a snowman of Gladstone outside apparently. It’s just beautiful here and there’s a fire and good comfort food to keep us going.

It’s been another great day so far. I taught my session this morning ‘Mono-, Inter-, Multi-disciplinarity’ and it was lots of fun. I asked students to tell me about their own research – what’s their primary discipline and how do they know? The answers were fascinating – we have self-identifying English literary critics, Historians, Historians of Science and of Medicine, and even a Midwife among us. I was even more impressed by the multitude of reasons that people gave for being able to tell what their discipline was – ranging from methods (‘I work in archives’, ‘I always go back to the text’, ‘it’s the kinds of questions that I ask’) to the practical (‘it’s on my visa’). We spoke about whether interdisciplinarity is ever, truly possible and finally, whether it matters. I was really encouraged and inspired by the session.

Then Stephanie Snow gave a thoroughly informative and thought-provoking talk, surveying the shifts and changes in medical knowledge and practice from 1500- 1900. What a feat, and not only this, her talk threw up all manner of interesting connections and continuities in this survey from the Greeks to moderns, such as the idea of whole body therapies. I learned many new fascinating facts, even about the historical period in which I work, and about much more. Stephanie finished with the example of cancer and the way that our understanding and treatment of it has changed over time.

Next we heard from Katy Price about how she has used history of science in her work on relativity and literature. Her talk offered some practical advice for the students – that we need to be careful when we  assume similarities between writers/painters/scientists of generally similar historical moments; that incorrect science can still offer us valid and informative views; and that the science itself is perhaps less important for such studies as ours when compared to analysis of the way that it is communicated.

Tonight we will hear from five more postgrads on their research and I’m looking forward to that.  

More soon,

Sharon

Dear blog,

Well, it’s the end of a long day but it’s been a great day. We have a great bunch of students here – really impressive – interested in all manner of things from lots of different angles and historical periods.

We’ve had our first plenary speaker, Charlotte Sleigh, from the University of Kent gave an excellent paper called ‘Empiricism and Science’  exploring the ways in which empiricism is historically contingent and looking at points of comparison between the emergence of the modern novel and the founding of the Royal Society.

Then, Mark Llewellyn from the University of Liverpool, who had been a postdoc on the AHRC-funded Gladstone Reading Project told us a little about Gladstone’s library, where we’re staying this week. We went to the library itself and saw some fascinating annotations by the great man himself and tried some terms in the ‘Glad Cat’ or catalogue of Gladstone books.

After dinner, we had the first evening of postgraduate presentations. I learned from Louise Jenkins that while instruments are now used in approximately 60% of births now their use had been treated with far more anxiety and suspicion in the C19th. She is looking at why midwifery moved from being a woman centred process to a ‘doctor knows best approach’. Aiden Flynn is looking at ‘asylum art’ in the early C20th; it is was interesting to learn that there were exhibitions of art by asylum inmates and catalogues of their work. Such events are suggestive, he argued persuasively, in the debate over links between creativity and madness as well as the aesthetic value of Modernist art.  Will Tattersdill is looking at science fiction in periodicals in the 1890s – he gave an impassioned talk about the importance of such studies, asking whether English could help science  or any other sphere outside of itself, and his contention was that English has use because it helps us to understand the metaphors we live by. Abby Bentham is considering the shift that takes place between literary representations (such as Dostoevsky’s) of psychopaths as the ‘fiendish other’ and the more modern empathy shown to popular characters such as Dexter. She is looking at the importance of psychoanalysis and psychopharmacy in this move from the moral to the medical understanding of psychopaths. Finally, last but not least, Paul Craddock talked about the ‘poetics of transplant’ using the transplantation of teeth from early C19th urchins to well-to-do ladies as an example. Defining transplant as a transaction that takes place between two bodies, Paul is going to look at the Romantic perception of self at this crucial historical moment.

All of this in one day – and on Newton’s birthday no less… More tomorrow.

Sharon

Dear Blog,

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a relaxing Christmas and is looking forward to all that 2010 will bring. To start off the year we have the first of our events in the AHRC training programme: ‘Theories and Methods: Literature,  Science and Medicine’ taking place at St Deiniol’s near Chester http://www.st-deiniols.com/ from tomorrow till Friday 8th January.

It’s a good time to be going to St Deiniol’s since only a few days ago, on 29 December, it was the two hundredth anniversary of William Ewart Gladstone’s birth in 1809. Gladstone founded St Deiniol’s library and his books, with his annotations in them, are there. The place itself is beautiful and a real retreat for academics and others — I’m hoping that there will still be snow there and that the fire in the cosy common room will be lit each night.

The programme for the week can be seen here: http://www.litscimed.org.uk/page/event1_programme. We’re hoping to send material back from the event and incorporate material generated by those not at the event itself into the sessions. Students will give presentations on their work and will complete a reflective diary (in whatever form they chose) that we can mount on the social space or the LitSciMed website after the event. Plenary speakers will be filmed or recorded and their powerpoint presentations will be uploaded so that the event is captured online and can form a teaching resource after the training programme has finished. Please do send me any requests that you have for information (reading lists, discussion topics, accompanying materials) that we should cover in the programme or that we can use on the site.

The reading pack is online too: http://www.litscimed.org.uk/page/readings if you would like to keep up with the programme as it unfolds.

All best and watch this space…

Sharon