Dear blog,<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s week one and I\u2019m just about to go to do my first lecture of the 2011-12 academic year on \u2018The Self\u2019 as part of the Romantic Period module\u2026 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.<\/p>\n
I was in Exeter at the beginning of this week for the \u2018Biology and Culture\u2019 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\u2019s 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\u2019s inheritance. He likened this to Sassaure\u2019s idea of simultaneous synchronic and diachronic axes in the sign.<\/p>\n
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\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s poetry. The event will take place on Monday 24th<\/sup> October, 6-8pm in City Library (Deansgate) Manchester: http:\/\/www.manchestersciencefestival.com\/whatson\/humphry-davy<\/a><\/p>\n Best,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sharon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear blog, So it\u2019s week one and I\u2019m just about to go to do my first lecture of the 2011-12 academic year on \u2018The Self\u2019 as part of the Romantic Period module\u2026 This will be followed by two tutorial groups … Continue reading