Society for Literature & Science Annual Meeting 2004 With the cooperation of Duke University Durham, NC October 14 - 17, 2004 Society for Literature & Science Annual Meeting 2004 Welcome to the SLS Meeting! Please note any announcements posted at the registration desk, and feel free to contact the conference crew there with your questions and suggestions. Internet Access: Please inquire at our registration desk about access options. Wireless access requires a code. Badges: Please wear your badge for any sessions or food service. We thank you! Lost Badges: Badges will be replaced for $5. To expedite please bring proof of registration. This conference has been generously supported and sponsored by the following offices and departments: • Duke University: o Office of the Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies o Office of the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences (2003/2004) o Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory o Information Science & Information Studies Program o School of Law o John Hope Franklin Center o Department of English • Fordham University o Office of the Dean of Fordham College o Department of English The conference organizers would like to thank especially the following for their assistance: Paul Youngman Ann Millett David Kirby Members of the Duke Hosting Committee Berry Bloomingdale 1 Conference Layout Ballroom Hotel Exhibit Hall 101 102 103 104 Meeting Rooms 108 105 Board Room II 107 106 2 Schedule at a Glance Date/Time Room 102 Room 103 Room 104 Board Room II Room 105 Room 106 Room 107 Room 108 Th 10/14 5-6:30pm 1A 1B 1C 1D 1E 1F Interdisciplining Pharmakos, Textual Play: Lens of Rhetoric of Sciences of Animals Double-binds, Women and Science: 19th Virtual the Virtual: Singularities Literary Century Embodiments Deleuze and Hypermedia Representations Beyond 7-8:30pm 2A 2B 2C 2D 2E 2F Darwin’s The Constructing Ruth Ozeki: Communicating Authors and Encounters Descent and Cultural Manifesting Alien Artifacts with Islam: Animal Studies Meanings of Agricultural Materialities Science, Genetics Studies Math, Writing Fr 10/15 8:30-10am 3A 3B 3C 3D 3E 3F 3G Historicizing the Visualizing the Gaming Modes Science and Posthuman Science in Pedagogies Question of the Body Nature Writing Identities Spanish of Science Animal Literature 10:30-12 4A 4B 4C 4D 4E 4F 4G The Beast in Visible Latour and the American Narrating and The Violence Number, the Garden in Fantasies Limits of the Literature, the Network of Identity Text, Artifact 18th Century Human Science, France Society 1:30-3pm 5A 5B 5C 5D 5E 5F 5G Animal Studies/ Problematising Mathematics 19th Century Intelligence and Ethology, Poetry and Other Studies Pregnancy and Science: Information Ecology, Science: 18th Imagination I: Darwin’s Ethnicity and and 19th Pre-Modern Contemporaries Science Centuries 3 Date/Time Room 102 Room 103 Room 104 Board Room II Room 105 Room 106 Room 107 Room 108 3:30-5 6A 6B 6C 6D 6E 6F 6G Livestock Representing Mathematics 19th Century New Media: Alchemy, Encountering Contagion and American Music and Metals and the Alien Imagination II: Literature Poetry Magic Modern 5:30-7 Guest Scholar Session 7-8 Reception – Room 101 Sat 10/16 8:30-10am 7A 7B 7C 7D 7E 7F 7G Humans and Writing Bodies/ Negotiating Bio-Techno Early Modern [Performing Nature, Animals Reading Habits Marginalized Science Literature and and Art] Science, Cyber Fictions Space Fiction Identities 10:30-12 8A 8B 8C 8D 8E 8F 8G Ethics, Sciences of Autopoeisis Writing Science, Law Pleasure, Environment Affect I and Complexity Medicine and the Courts Sentience and and Ecology the Sublime 12-1:30pm Business Lunch – Room 101 1:30-3pm 9A 9B 9C 9D 9E 9F 9G Reading Visual Sciences of Scientific Art History I: Art [Science Drama, Woolf, Images of Affect II Mappings and Science in Fictions] Science and Borges, Plath Animal Bodies the 19th Century Medicine 3:30-5 10A 10B 10C 10D 10E 10F 10G Crossing Sciences of Re-imagining Art, 19th Century 20th Century Sociology, Scientific Affect III Learning, Technology, Machines and American Sociobiology, Boundaries Teaching, and Science and Psychology Writers and Fact and Tenure Beyond Science Fiction 4 Date/Time Room 102 Room 103 Room 104 Board Room II Room 105 Room 106 Room 107 Room 108 5:30-7 Guest Scholar Session 9:30-12midnight – Dance Party – Room 101 Sun 10/17 8:30-10 11A 11B 11C 11D 11E 11F 11G Sexology and The Tech and Robotics and Film Studies Faith and Considering Psychoanalysis Techne of Cybernetics Science Chemistry Anima and Across Manga Cultures 10:30-12 12A 12B 12C 12D 12E 12F 12G Psychosomatic 19th Century Digital Media/ [Artists and Travel: Gender, Margaret Mapping, Science Disabilities Remediation Science] Race, Empire Atwood’s Oryx Traveling, and Crake Living in China 12-1pm Wrap-up Session 5 Thu, Oct 14, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm Session 1 Session 1 Thu, Oct 14, 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm Session 1A: Interdisciplining Animals Room 104 Panel Chair: Susan McHugh (University of New England) Respondent: Matt Cartmill (Duke University) Frankenstein's Dogs or, Fictions of Lab Science This paper will explore how certain canine fictions of lab science negotiate what are perhaps the most irreconcilable disciplinary poles characterizing the so-called two-culture divide: animal rights philosophies and laboratory science practices. Among the many remakes and revisions of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, recent texts cast dogs not just as scientific creations but also as members of scientific teams. Together these very different stories about Frankenstein's dogs do more than simply reflect a split between active or passive, actual or fictional narratives of scientific subjects. Addressing anxieties about compromising scientific "objectivity" by granting varying degrees of social agency to animals, they also present a range of models for conceptualizing animals in laboratory life. Examinations of these narrative patterns raise broader questions about how animal studies offers a means of critically engaging with animal science and rights philosophies. Susan McHugh (University of New England) An Obsession with Boundaries: Animal Studies in its Own Right This paper will examine some of the current limitations of animal studies and suggest ways in which the subject might be seen as a disciplinary area in its own right with quite particular forms of theorizing that do not relate to those derived from traditions in the humanities geared to explaining human questions. Whilst there are some exceptions to this picture, there has been to date far too much focus on the human as the centre of gravity of animal studies; a bias towards textual sources and textual readings of the animal; a lack of interest in cultural and social differences in attitudes and practices towards animals both within the same society and across societies globally; and a lack of a sense of urgency in attending to the problems facing human-animal relations. Recent postmodern and post human analyses, interesting as they are, have represented a step backwards in animal studies failing to grasp the practical and institutional frameworks of human-animal relations of what is a very dark history as well as continuing, albeit unintentionally, to fetishism the human. There is a need to move the animal to centre stage in animal studies and develop theories out of the overall framework of human-animal relations rather than use those developed for a different purpose, which is that of a specifically text based Western theoretical tradition. Jonathan Burt (Animal Studies Group, UK) This Is the Trunk . and This Is the Tale: Elephants, Science, and the Humanities Building on the panel's overall interest in disciplinary and interdisciplinary discussions of animals, this paper examines the conundrum faced by a cultural historian attempting 1) to make sense out of scientific accounts of elephants, and 2) to translate the definitive vernacular of "science" into something that would make sense to both other historians and a more general audience. Nigel Rothfels (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) Session 1B: Pharmakos, Double-binds, Singularities Board Room II 6 Thu, Oct 14, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm Session 1 Panel Chair: Michael A. Fortun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) Doublebinds and Other Moving Objects in the Anthropology of Technoscience. This paper discusses various "objects" – doublebinds, experimental systems, promises, faultlines – that anthropologists have used to situate technoscience historically, and to elicit technoscientists' own historical sensibilities. Doublebinds, for example, as conceived by Gregory Bateson, confront people with multiple obligations that cannot all be fulfilled; they cannot be "solved" through reference to existing explanatory narratives. Doublebinds are failures of language and meaning. They also spur creativity, forcing people to "dream up" new ways of understanding and engaging the world. Experimental systems, as written about by Hans Jorg Rheinberger, are what scientists work with to produce new knowledge. Such systems must be capable of "differential reproduction," allowing shifts and displacements in the investigative process that produce something different from what was known before. Like double binds, experimental systems require oscillation between what is known and what is not known; they require choices that cannot be made through reference to existing explanatory narratives. Kim Fortun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) A Social Science Fiction of Pharmakons and Fevers: Malaria, the colonial laboratory and the post- colonial new human. This paper explores malaria research and eradication campaigns through both social science and science fiction. Malaria is a classic actor-network in that it is caused by a parasite transmitted by a vector to humans and thrives in a range of milieux. It is more a relation than a thing and thus very difficult to eradicate as many aspects of the disease and its cure remain poorly understood. Because of this I deploy social science fiction as a laboratory to explore malaria as a disease, a transmitter, and human attempts to confront it as a pharmakon, both cure and poison.