DECODINGS
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts Newsletter
Winter 2025, Vol. 35, No.1 (January 25)
*SLSA 2025: Risk (Oregon State University, Corvallis)—proposal deadline 2/17/25
*SLSA Travel Grants
*Executive Meeting Notes
*Call for Essays; Configurations special issue: “Out of the Past”
*New Book Series: Proximities: Experiments in Nearness
*Call for Volunteer Ombudspersons
*Social Media & Website Redesign
*Policies:Respectful Behavior and Freedom of Speech
*AnthropoScene Book Series
*Configurations Book Reviews
*SLSA Europe
*Conference: SLSAeu 2025 “The Lifespan: Perspectives on Ageing”
SLSA 2025, “Risk,” August 21-24, 2025
Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR
Proposal and Panel Deadline: February 17, 2025
To think in terms of risk is to imagine the future as a set of foreseeable possibilities and to ameliorate the potentially hazardous ones through action in the present. Distinct from danger, which is seen as inchoate and incalculable, risk carries with it the notion of statistical, probabilistic, or otherwise enumerated legibility, and the costs and benefits of prospective courses of action are given the narrative authority of mathematical language. But even as risk posits itself as a rational approach to considerations of the future, it ignores the mythology of its own construction: risk is, as its critics note, always a process of storytelling. Put slightly differently, risk management is not just a mathematical but also an affective exercise involving anxieties, fears, rational or irrational speculations, (dis)honorable activities, and ethical claims. Furthermore, the ways risk is managed – through techniques like data mapping and visualization, actuarial accounting, and insurance bands – help to create social – and not merely mathematical – perceptions about who, what, and where might be “risky.” Risk, therefore, is a discourse that constitutes subjects and is capable of perpetuating cycles of injustice and immiseration. https://bgsal.space/2024/11/09/slsa-2025-cfp-risk/
This call for papers asks readers to consider risk as both a formal/generic term and as a term that shapes and is shaped by the contents of literature, the arts, and cognate disciplines. How do risk and other related concepts (danger, hazard, speculation, debt, credit, assurance, insurance) work to colonize the future, construct forms, and produce narratives? How does a history of risk and the language used to describe it (adventure, projecting, imagination, curiosity, novelty) help us to understand the past’s future and its hazards? How has risk been enlisted in representations of social Others for progressive or regressive ends? How does risk throw into relief or complicate ethical relationships between nations, between cultures, between communities, and between humans and the natural world?
We welcome papers that address these concepts as well as proposals (presentations, panels, streams, workshops, and roundtables) on other subjects that fall within SLSA’s mission to explore the cultural and social dimensions of science, technology, and medicine. We are taking steps now to ensure that the conference will be accessible and welcoming to all SLSA members by pursuing low-cost housing for graduate students and contingent faculty and by reaching out to Oregon State University’s KidSpirit to facilitate childcare for academics traveling with small children.
Possible topics related to the theme include but are not limited to:
Climate The Commons
Futures Past Geopolitics and Biopolitics
Disaster Relief Capitalism
Prostheses Sustainability
Human and Animal Health Surveillance
Disease Regulation
Artificial Intelligence Conflict
Tipping Points Exposure
Infrastructure Data Visualization / Narratization
Privacy
Program Committee (Corvallis): Raymond Malewitz, Tekla Bude, Surabhi Balachander, Evan Gottlieb
Conference site: https://slsa2025.org/
Direct Submission Questions to the Conference Chair: Raymond Malewitz, raymond.malewitz@oregonstate.edu
All SLSA2025 participants must be members of the society. To join or renew membership, see https://bgsal.space/join-renew-membership/
SLSA Travel Awards
SLSA provides a limited number of travel awards for underfunded individuals attending the annual conference. Members of SLSA who present at the annual conference may apply for travel subventions by emailing their name, title of their SLSA presentation, an indication of how long one has been a member of SLSA, and any information about their funding for the conference to the Executive Director carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu by August 1. Please provide estimated travel expenses and the amount of support (if any) anticipated from other sources. If you have received travel support from SLSA in the past, please include information about that support (when and how much). SLSA officers will review applications and approve funds for as many as our budget permits; preference will be given to students and those most in need. Each person awarded funds will be presented with a US check at the conference business meeting. SLSA funds can be used to defray hotel, registration, transportation, or other travel expenses.
Nominations for SLSA Member-at-Large and Graduate Student Liaisons: Laura Otis (lotis@emory.edu) will chair the Nominations Committee with Paula Leverage (leverage@purdue.edu) and Ron Broglio (ron.broglio@asu.edu) serving as members. If you are interested in running for two-year position to serve as member-at-large on the executive committee or if you are a graduate student interested in being appointed as a graduate student liaison to the executive committee, please contact Laura, Paula, or Ron.
Awards: SLSA awards presented at the annual conference include the Bruns prize for the best unpublished graduate student essay and the Schachterle prize for the best published essay by an untenured scholar. Bruns submissions should be sent to Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal (ranjodhsingh.dhaliwal@ unibas.ch) by June 1, 2025, and Schachterle submissions should be sent to Carol Colatrella (carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu) by June 1, 2025.
Nominations for the Lifetime Achievement Award should be sent by July 10 to Dennis Summer (dennis@quantumdanceworks.com) See details about SLSA awards at https://bgsal.space/awards/
SLSA Executive Board Meeting 1/17/25 Notes
Attending: Rajani Sudan, Adam Nocek, Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, Ray Malewitz, Ed Chang, David Cecchetto, Laura Otis, Melissa Littlefield, Dennis Summers, Wayne Miller, Nat Mengist, Paula Leverage, Carol Colatrella
Rajani Sudan and her team were recognized for hosting the successful 2024 Conference at the Sheraton Dallas hotel. The budget is on the next page. SMU was a most generous sponsor.
Ray Malewitz discussed plans for the 2025 SLSA Risk Conference to be held August 21-24, 2025, on the Corvallis campus of Oregon State University. Sessions will be held in the performing arts center. In addition to two plenary sessions and panel sessions on a variety of topics, there will also be presentations in three streams: Game Studies, Animal Studies, and Performance Studies. There will be an art exhibit curated by the museum. Blocks of rooms for attendees will be reserved in local hotels; low-cost dormitory rooms will be available for graduate students. See the SLSA 2025 website for a submission link and more information, including about travel: https://slsa2025.org/ The remainder of the meeting discussion considered ways to improve the conference experience for graduate students and new attendees.
Call for essays for a Configurations special issue
Out of the Past: Reconsidering Nineteenth-Century Literature, Science, and Technology
Contributions are sought for a Special Issue of Configurations analyzing examples of nineteenth-century literary or visual texts about science and technology that are relevant to our current concerns. The text can come from any literary or artistic genre and from any cultural tradition; it should have been produced in the long nineteenth century: the period between the French Revolution (1789) and the end of World War I (1917). Each essay should concentrate on considering the form and the content of one work and its socio-cultural, historical, and political contexts, although connections to related works may be briefly considered in arguing for the significance of the selected literary text or artwork.
Questions that could be addressed include the following:
Timeline for Configurations issue 34.3 (final issue of 2026):
February 15, 2025—abstracts (250-500 words) due to both guest editors
October 15, 2025— authors’ manuscripts (5,000 to10,000 word essays) due to guest editors
Guest Editors: Carol Colatrella carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu and Hugh Crawford hugh.crawford@lmc.gatech.edu
Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology explores the relations of literature and the arts to the sciences and technology. Founded in 1993, the journal continues to set the stage for transdisciplinary research concerning the interplay between science, technology, and the arts. Configurations is the official publication of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA). https://bgsal.space/
SLSA BOOK SERIES Proximities: Experiments in Nearness, from University of Minnesota Press
We are thrilled that the first volume of the Proximities Series—Microbial Resolution, by Gloria Chan-Sook Kim—is now published and available!
Adjacencies abound. We are past the moment of merely thinking in terms of how opposites attract and nodes network. Today, disciplines and fields move consciously proximate to one another, in conversation and growing together. Further, the future is no longer sometime in the distance, but appears near to us, often grasped as an impending horizon of political, social, economic, and environmental catastrophe. Now more than ever, so much is so close. See the Call for Proposals (https://bgsal.space/proximitiesflyer.pdf) for more information.
Books in the Proximities series think proximately, that is, in disciplinary tandem, about the relationships within and between the arts, literature, and science, as well as how scholarship can best be in active dialogue with communities and the world around us today, and in the future. Published in association with the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, this series not only thinks across disciplines, but thinks about the continuities and crossings themselves, interrogating how and why their disciplinary proximities matter. Proximities publishes work that is crafted with nearness in mind: human nearness to one another and the world around us; nearness to one another’s thoughts; to our written and unwritten pasts; to critical trends and crises; to our futures ahead. This kind of scholarship powerfully catalyzes awareness of what it means to work interdisciplinarily by challenging assumptions about disciplinary thinking from the outside in, and the inside out. If interested in submitting a proposal, please contact the editors with a short description of your book project. Series Editors: David Cecchetto—York University (Toronto, Canada) dcecchet@yorku.ca and Arielle Saiber—Johns Hopkins University asaiber@jhu.edu
SLSA OMBUDSPERSONS: Any member interested in volunteering to serve as ombudsperson, should apply by emailing Carol Colatrella (carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu); include a short statement of why you are interested in serving in this role and what experience you can bring the position. Current officers will review applications to make appointments.
Each Ombudsperson is an impartial entity who strives to see that SLSA members and SLSA conference attendees are treated fairly and equitably. Any member/attendee can seek the advice of an Ombudsperson. The Ombudsperson is impartial, neutral, and confidential. The rights and interests of all parties to disputes are considered, with the goal of achieving fair outcomes.
The primary responsibilities of the Ombudsperson are:
Ombudspersons: Marcel O’Gorman marcel@uwaterloo.ca and Kari Nixon mkarinixon@gmail.com
SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEBSITE REDESIGN: Wayne Miller, Electronic Resources Coordinator (wayne.miller@gmail.com), asks for new images for the SLSA website homepage (bgsal.space). Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal and Ed Chang are developing SLSA social media. SLSA members interested in contributing to social media on behalf of the society are encouraged to email Ed (change@ohio.edu) and Ranjodh (rdhaliwa@nd.edu). Along with Adam Nocek, Wayne, Ranjodh, and Ed will work with graphic professionals to redesign the SLSA website.
POLICIES ADOPTED:Respectful Behavior and Freedom of Speech & Call for Ombudspersons
The updated policies are posted here:
ANTHROPOSCENE: This book series from Penn State University Press was published in collaboration with SLSA. While not all scientists have accepted the term “anthropocene” as part of the geological timescale, the idea that humans are changing the planet and its environments in radical and irreversible ways has provoked new kinds of cross-disciplinary thinking about relationships among the arts, human technologies, and nature. This is the broad, cross-disciplinary basis for books published in the series, which includes specialized studies for scholars in a variety of disciplines as well as widely accessible works of interest to broad audiences. Send questions to the SLSA liaison for the series, Pamela Gossin at psgossin@utdallas.edu or psgossin@gmail.com. Titles in the series appear here: https://www.psupress.org/books/series/book_SeriesAnthropoScene.html SLSA Member Discount from Penn State University Press: Use promo code NR21 for 30% off AnthropoScene titles purchased directly, plus free domestic shipping and discounts on foreign shipping! See https://www.psupress.org/emailassets/NR_SLSA_1021.html
Configurations Book Reviews: Jay Labinger, the Configurations book review editor, will publish around 10 reviews per year, of books–on any topic–that are likely to interest a wide cross-section of SLSA members and Configurations readers. If you wish to propose a book for review, please email Jay (jal@its.caltech.edu) the author/title/publisher, a very brief description and statement of why it merits being reviewed in Configurations, and whether you would like to do the review yourself or, if not, any suggestions you may have for appropriate reviewers. Authors are welcome to propose their own recent book for review, with the same info. Jay will post a list of books on litsci-l and ask anyone interested in reviewing one of them to respond to him. Look at an issue of Configurations to get an idea of the preferred length and style for reviews. After a reviewer has been matched with a book, Jay will ask for submission of the review within four months, and he will share the estimated date of publication.
The EUROPEAN Society for Literature, Science, and the Art is the sister organization of the international, USA-based Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. SLSAeu welcomes colleagues in the humanities, the social sciences, the arts, and all fields of science, medicine, engineering, and computer sciences as well as independent scholars, artists, and scientists. https://www.slsa-eu.org/.
SLSAeu 2025 CONFERENCE: The Lifespan: Perspectives on Ageing and the Life Course from the Medical Humanities, the Health Sciences and Age Studies. London (The Great Hall, King’s College), 4-6 June 2025
Conference of SLSAeu, European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts and The Sciences of Ageing and the Culture of Youth
Organizers: Dr Aura Heydenreich (President SLSAeu), Dr Martina Zimmermann (SAACY Programme Lead
Abstracts were due January 20, 2025. For informal queries: SLSAeu-SAACY-Conference@kcl.ac.uk
Ageing is too often seen as an inevitable period of decline at the end of life. The UKRI-funded research programme The Sciences of Ageing and the Culture of Youth (SAACY), based at the Centre for the Humanities and Health at King’s College London, a research hub invested in the human dimensions of healthcare, looks at how we can overcome this cultural pessimism by understanding ageing as a lifelong process rather than something that happens at the end of our lives. Older age poses challenges and opportunities just like every other phase in life. This conference is interested in the synergistic capacities of ageing research across the humanities, social and medical/life sciences invested in ageing as a lifelong process. SLSAeu and SAACY join for this conference to share research at the many intersections of science, literature and the arts. The three-day conference will be held at King’s College London. We are keen to foster conversations across disciplines within panels and invite contributions on lifespan/lifecourse approaches to ageing from disciplines such as Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Languages and Literatures, Narrative Medicine, Dementia Studies, Geriatrics, Gerontology, Neuroscience, Psychiatry, Public Health, Disability Studies, Epidemiology, Evolutionary Science and Medicine, Gender Studies, Philosophy, Critical Posthumanism, Postgenomic Sciences and Health Economics. We have a strong preference for papers to be presented in person, while hoping to be able to provide limited hybrid options.
Confirmed plenary speakers and round table discussants include:
Sally Chivers, Trent University, Canada; Ulrike Draesner, Leipzig University, Germany;
Des O’Neill, Trinity College Dublin, Republic of Ireland; Susan Pickard, University of Liverpool, UK;
Oliver Robinson, Imperial College London, UK; Kavita Sivaramakrishnan, Columbia University, USA;
Aagje Swinnen, Maastricht University, Netherlands
Conference website: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/slsaeu-2025saacy-conference
SLSA EXECUTIVE BOARD (2025)
President: Rajani Sudan, Southern Methodist University (rsudan@mail.smu.edu)
Executive Director: Carol Colatrella, Georgia Institute of Technology (carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu)
First Vice-President: Adam Nocek, Arizona State University (Adam.Nocek@asu.edu)
Second Vice-President: Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, University of Basel ranjodhsingh.dhaliwal@unibas.ch
Members-at-Large: Paula Leverage (2023-25), Shane Denson (2023-25), Nat Mengist (2024-26)
Graduate Student Liaisons: Elena Maloul (emaloul@umich.edu)
Configurations Editors: Melissa Littlefield, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Rajani Sudan,
Southern Methodist University. Configurations Email address: configurations@smu.edu
Configurations Book Review Editor: Jay Labinger, California Institute of Technology (jal@its.caltech.edu)
Publications Committee: Pamela Gossin; Raymond Malewitz; Bruce Clarke
Electronic Resources Coordinator: Wayne Miller (wayne.miller@gmail.com)
Arts Liaisons: Dennis Summers (dennis@quantumdanceworks.com); Maria Whiteman (mtw1@iu.edu)
Social Media Liaisons: Ed Chang (change@ohio.edu); Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal (rdhaliwa@nd.edu)
Ombudspersons: Marcel O’Gorman (marcel@uwaterloo.ca); Kari Nixon (knixon@whitworth.edu)
Past Presidents: David Cecchetto, York University, Toronto; Marcel O’Gorman, University of Waterloo; Ron Broglio, Arizona State University; Robert Markley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Laura Otis, Emory University; Richard Nash, Indiana University; Alan Rauch, University of North Carolina-Charlotte; Bruce Clarke, Texas Tech University; Eve Keller, Fordham University; Jay Labinger, California Institute of Technology; T. Hugh Crawford, Georgia Tech; Susan Squier, Penn State; Sidney Perkowitz, Emory University; Stuart Peterfreund, Northeastern University; James J. Bono, SUNY-Buffalo; N. Katherine Hayles, Duke University; Mark Greenberg, Drexel University; Lance Schachterle, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Stephen J. Weininger, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
The Executive Director can be reached at (404) 894-1241 or carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu.
Postal address: Carol Colatrella, Executive Director, SLSA, School of Literature, Media, and
Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology, 686 Cherry Street, Atlanta, GA 30332-0165
SLSA websites: http://www.bgsal.space and http://slsa.press.jhu.edu
