CfP: Scale of Nature: Long Nineteenth-Century Culture and the Great Chain of Being
Type: Call for Papers
Date: March 18, 2017
Location: United Kingdom
Subject Fields: Art,
Art History & Visual Studies, British History / Studies, History of
Science, Medicine, and Technology, Intellectual History, Religious
Studies and Theology
Scale of Nature: Long Nineteenth-Century Culture and the Great Chain of Being
One-Day Conference
Saturday 18 March 2017
Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies and Centre for Visual Arts and Culture
Durham University, UK
Keynote Address: Professor Peter Bowler (Queen’s University, Belfast)
CALL FOR PAPERS
Amongst
the paradigms current in nineteenth-century culture the Great Chain of
Being frequently held pride of place, vying against Darwinian approaches
in what historian of science Peter Bowler described broadly as the
‘non-Darwinian revolution’. Arming scientists with a scale of nature - a
fixed hierarchical arrangement of the natural world from the lowest
rudimentary forms of life to its apogee in man – the Great Chain helped
Victorian Britain reassert order and control in the face of perceived
threats by the inherent randomness, chance and uncertainty of Darwin’s
evolutionary theory. Paradoxically, in the battle between The Great
Chain and Darwin, it was the Great Chain of Being that was frequently
the fittest survivor. This one-day interdisciplinary conference examines
this phenomenon, exploring Britain’s understanding of the Scale of
Nature by investigating the Great Chain of Being in the context of the
pre-, non- and post-Darwinian as well as Darwinian evolutionary culture
in the long nineteenth century. It pays particular attention to visual
representations of natural hierarchies.
We invite academic and
institutional staff, postgraduates and other researchers to submit
abstracts of 300 words for 20-minute individual papers, and 500 words
for panels (three papers). Topics might include, but are not limited to:
• The history of The Great Chain as diversely and divergently reinterpreted by nineteenth-century figures
•
Visual and spatial representations of The Great Chain of Being and
competitor evolutionary ideas, as found in drawings, paintings, book
illustration, cinema, photography, sculpture, architecture, museum
design, exhibition and taxidermy spaces, and zoological gardens
• Implications for literary contexts, such as fiction, poetry, history and biography
•
Its cultural influence in the arts more broadly, including evolutionary
impacts in theatre, dance and music and other performance-related
activities