Dear blog,

So it’s week one and I’m just about to go to do my first lecture of the 2011-12 academic year on ‘The Self’ as part of the Romantic Period module… This will be followed by two tutorial groups for the same module. I still get excited and nervous at the start of the academic year.

I was in Exeter at the beginning of this week for the ‘Biology and Culture’ workshop organised by Angelique Richardson. It was an interesting few days with a real variety of people present, even some actual scientists! The first plenary speaker was Anne Fausto-Stirling, a biologist who was trying to find out more about the markers for a child’s gender development. She is challenging the traditional accounts of gender development (the toys children play with, the peer groups they associate with) and instead was looking at the interplay of voice and touch in the dyad of the mother-child relationship. The second speaker was Jay Clayton, who spoke of genome time, pointing out that the past, present, and future are all held in the gene, while the is also the very real sense of a gene’s inheritance. He likened this to Sassaure’s idea of simultaneous synchronic and diachronic axes in the sign.

We had lots of time for discussion over the two days, with the participants offering five-minute talks on the current issues in literature and science studies and on their sense of its future directions. Much came out of this; I’ve been mulling some things over ever since and probably will continue to do for some time. There was a general consensus that we need to persuade the public (and perhaps some scientists) of the importance of history, to deepen and contextualise the issues discussed today.

Booking is now available for my lecture on Humphry Davy (the chemist and poet) for the Manchester Science Festival, which will be followed by a workshop led by Wahida Amin, a PhD student working on Davy’s poetry. The event will take place on Monday 24^th October, 6-8pm in City Library (Deansgate) Manchester: http://www.manchestersciencefestival.com/whatson/humphry-davy

Best,

Sharon

Dear blog,

Well the new academic year is upon us. It’s induction week this week and we met our new first years yesterday – they were all very excited and nervous, and raring to go. Many of them had read (and enjoyed) Mansfield Park, which is on the core Narrative Fictions and the Novel module and I’m hopeful that we’ll have a fair few interested in the Romantic Period after hearing their enthusiasm.

I’m busy preparing for the start of term – I’ll be teaching mainly on the Romantic Period module and my third-year option module Green Writing. There are some overlaps (such as Wordsworth) and I’ll be teaching some of the texts and authors that I most love. Green Writing presents an opportunity to think about the ways that literature can affect and change people’s perceptions of the natural world and our place in it. I’m pleased to be teaching a module with such overt political interest and it’s always fascinating to hear the students’ views and opinions on such important matters. Economic issues have been taking media and political attention away from issues such as climate change recently and each year a new cohort of students has different perspective and values on the importance of the environment.

Next Monday I’ve been invited to attend a closed workshop on the subject of new directions in the study of literature and biology. Angelique Richardson at the University of Exeter is the organiser of this event (have a look at her marvellous book Love and Eugenics in the late Nineteenth Century: Rational Reproduction and the New Woman) and there are some excellent participants. Some of us have been asked to prepare a five-minute position paper on the main issues in, and future possible directions of, literature and science studies. I went to a similar event in the summer at the University of Aberdeen and I’ve been thinking about the ideas that were raised there ever since. In anticipation, I’ve been reading Charlotte Sleigh’s excellent Palgrave guidebook Literature and Science, which I urge all to read who have an interest in the subject.

There are lots of interesting events coming up this academic year: English at Salford are offering a new course to Eccles Library on the general theme of ‘Memory, Text and Place’ teaching books that have a particular connection to the North West. I’m giving a lecture on Humphry Davy as part of the Manchester Science Festival in October, as well as talks in Bergen, Bart’s Hospital London, Edge Hill University, York University, Leeds University, and for the Open University. It’ll be busy but also fun.

More soon,

Sharon