Dear blog,<\/p>\n
The BARS conference that I went to at the end of July was excellent. It as really nice to catch up with people, some of whom I\u2019ve not seen for years, and there were some excellent papers. I particularly liked the Lucretius session organised by Rowan Boyson, who gave a great paper, as did Anne Janowitz and Martin Priestman. The session sent me back to Martin\u2019s electronic edition of Erasmus Darwin\u2019s The Temple of Nature (http:\/\/www.rc.umd.edu\/editions\/darwin_temple\/<\/a>), which has such a great introduction by Martin himself. There were great plenary lectures too. My favourite was by Ina Ferris, who talked about contemporary theories of apparitions and how they could be used to describe what Scott was doing in his historical novels. William Christie gave an interesting paper too on the science in Blackwood\u2019s Edinburgh Magazine. Adding this to the session called \u2018Medical Humanities\u2019 that I spoke in, with great papers given by Gavin Budge and Craig Franson, I think we can say that interest in the relationships between literature and science of the Romantic period is healthy and well.<\/p>\n Since then I\u2019ve been working on my book: Creating Romanticism: the Literature, Science and Medicine of the 1790s. I\u2019ve been writing chapter three on the use of contemporary scientific accounts of reproduction, generation and organic growth as metaphors for literary composition. It\u2019s difficult work and it\u2019s very hard to find the time with all the other tasks I have to do. I\u2019ve been reading Coleridge\u2019s Biographia Literaria this past week, which is possibly the most famous account of literary creativity as organic process.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve also been writing the end of award report for the AHRC LitSciMed project, which has been interesting work, thinking about what was achieved (both planned and unforeseen outcomes) by the programme. We\u2019re working on the website, trying get the resources pages exactly right so that they can be of the greatest use to others in the future. I do hope that some of the collaborations that were formed during the course of the programme continue and flourish; that would be wonderful. The social space will disappear soon; we\u2019ve moved some of the student work over to http:\/\/virtual-doc.salford.ac.uk\/litscimed\/<\/a>. The LitSciMed blogs have been moved to here now too. Remember that the Facebook page is up and running (though it needs more people to post more events and news on it!) at http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LitSciMed<\/a>.<\/p>\n Upcoming events to watch out for: the Manchester Literature Festival looks excellent again and I\u2019ll be going to lots of it (http:\/\/www.manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk\/<\/a>) and the Manchester Science Festival is poised to publish its programme too (I\u2019ll be doing a talk on Humphry Davy for this): http:\/\/www.manchestersciencefestival.com\/<\/a>. If you\u2019re in the Lake District this summer, the Shelley\u2019s Ghost exhibition is brilliant too: http:\/\/www.wordsworth.org.uk\/events\/index.asp?pageid=574<\/a>.<\/p>\n More soon,<\/p>\n Sharon<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear blog, The BARS conference that I went to at the end of July was excellent. It as really nice to catch up with people, some of whom I\u2019ve not seen for years, and there were some excellent papers. I … Continue reading