CfP for common symposia of Science and Literature & Scientific Instruments Commissions for Prague 2021 DHST/IUHPST Congress
The Scientific Instruments
Commission and the Commission of Science and Literature
invite papers for two special sessions in the 26th International
History of Science and Technology Congress organized by DHST/IUHPST
in Prague, 2021 that we are
co-sponsoring.
Session
I: Literary Instruments
Since
at least the seventeenth century, scientific instruments and
apparatus have appeared in novels, poetry, drama and other
literary genres, including more recently cinema and television.
Literary authors might refer to contemporary science (John Milton
on Galileo’s telescope), to future science (Star Trek Original
Series on the “tricorder” of the 23rd century),
or to past science (Luchino Visconti’s recreation of a
nineteenth-century astronomical observatory in his 1963 film The
Leopard). Papers in this symposium will offer case studies
of such literary representations of scientific apparatus, authors’
interactions with scientific practitioners or instrument makers,
and audience and critical responses to these literary
representations.
Session
II: Behind Closed Doors: Crime Fiction in Museums and Labs
Since
the mid-nineteenth century, a relatively large number of crime
novels have been set in science museums or laboratories. In The
Musgrave Ritual (1893), for example, Arthur Conan Doyle has
Sherlock Holmes educate himself in the British Museum before
embarking on his detective work; Agatha Christie’s A Mysterious
Affair at Styles (1920) is a veritable encyclopedia of
poisons and their chemistry. How might crime novels perpetuate
public images of the “museum” or the “laboratory”? Papers in this
session will evaluate the circumstances of these settings, the
crime authors’ sources for their portrayals of scientific
institutions, contemporary scientists’ evaluations of the settings
depicted in the novels, and readers’ responses to the settings.
Please
submit by
10 April 2020 abstracts of not more than 250 words and
a brief biographical sketch to either George Vlahakis or
Sofia Talas.
Note
that according to the usual rules, you can only present one paper
at the Prague Congress.