Old Email Archive
Return to old archive list
digest 1997-03-05 #001
11:27 PM 3/4/97 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science"
Daily SLS Email Digest
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 4 Mar 1997 05:40:35 -0800
From: Gilbert Brown
Subject: Re: Unsubscribe
Sorry to bother you with this request.
But I seem to be on the list twice; every message comes two times.
Please unsubscribe me once.
Thank you.
Gil Brown
At 09:07 AM 3/3/97 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I'm happy to unsubscribe people, but the non-intrusive way to do
this is to
>send a message to listSTAR@HUMnet.UCLA.EDU with the following
command flush
>left in the body of the message:
>
>unsubscribe LITSCI-L
>
>You can also send a message directly to me or to
listmaster@humnet.ucla.edu.
>
>Wayne
>
>
>/-----------------------------------------------/
> Wayne Miller
> Germanic Languages 2326 Murphy Hall
> Humanities Computing Facility 343 Kinsey Hall
> University of California, Los Angeles 90095
> (310) 206-2004 Fax: (310) 825-7428
>/-----------------------------------------------/
>
>
>
>
Dr. Gilbert J. Brown
University of Massachusetts Lowell
Nuclear Engineering Program
Lowell, MA 01854
Phone: (508) 934-3166
Fax: (508) 934-3047
email: brown@cae.uml.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 4 Mar 1997 15:31:32 -0800
From: "Wayne Miller"
Subject: A call for papers for MLA 97
The following stems from Prof. McDonald (see info below):
If anyone on this list would be interested in submitting a proposal
(electronic proposals would be fine) for a panel on contemporary
British
literature and science for the '97 MLA convention in Toronto, please
send
it to one of the addresses listed below. I am especially interested
in proposals related to fiction and psychoanalysis, cognitive
science/psychology, or chaos theory, but any proposal touching on
contemporary Brit lit and science would be gratefully received and
carefully considered.
Thanks for considering my request.
Michael Bruce McDonald
Assistant Professor of English
Department of Humanities
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
Rapid City, SD 57701
mmcdonal@silver.sdsmt.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 4 Mar 1997 18:28:15 -0800
From: Stephen J Weininger
Subject: Re: Literature and Science?
I'm an even more furtive lurker than Keith Garbutt. But I've been
smoked
out at last by some of these exchanges, so I'll fling out my two cents
worth and then scurry, JD Salinger-like, back to my mountain fastness.
To my fellow scientist Keith, I have to say that my experience as a
chemist with litmus tests has made me sensitive to their limitations. I
have to say that I am doubtful as to whether yours will pass empirical
muster. The fact that the litsci list has not been buzzing about Dolly
is
not incontrovertible evidnce that SLS members lack a genuine interest
in
or a knowledge of science. I teach in an institution whose students and
faculty are drawn predominantly from engineering and the sciences.
There
has been nothing on our internal e-mail at all about Dolly. I don't
know
what kind of discussions have been going on among my colleagues in
Biology, but in my department (chemistry and biochemistry) people have
certainly not been waylaying one another in the corridors to chat about
her. Perhpas I have just condemned my entire institution, but at least
the
flaw cannot be laid in the lap of the humanists.
If we are concerned with getting more scientists to participate in SLS,
then I firmly believe that we need to address pragmatic issues before
we
over-agonize about cultural ones. I thought Tom Weissert made a good
start
in that respect when he noted, some time ago, that even those
scientists
who wanted to come to an SLS would have difficulty finding
justification
for getting the funds to do so. Could we concentrate a little more on
identifying activities that scientists and science studies people can
and
have been collaborating on so as to permit more scientists to justify
joining us?? I'm trying to make a modest contribution along these
lines
by putting together one or more panels on jointly taught courses. That
is
quite conventional and simple-minded; I hope that some of you more
imaginative types can identify other common kinds of common ground.
Finally please indulge me if I return to a theme that I plugged some
time
ago in "Decodings." We have a serious asymmetry in the degree
of
familiarity with the other camp's doings that scientists and literary
people bring to the SLS conferences. Science has been widely
popularized,
and the type of literaturist that comes to SLS is often quite well
informed about the substance and even the jargon of contemporary
science.
For better or worse no such popularization of literary theory has taken
place; the James Gleick of "reinscription" and
"intertextuality" is still
mute. [I think one of Wayne Miller's observations, quoted below, is
related to the point I'm making.] So we have an enormous
"vocabularly gap"
with all that this situation implies. Imagine what our conferences
would
be like if the vocabulary (and knowledge) of our literary colleagues
were
confined to classical biology, chemistry and physics. I wish we could
devote some more thought to overcoming this vocabulary gap.
Steve
************************************************************
Stephen J. Weininger Internet: stevejw@wpi.edu
Professor of Chemistry Phone: (508) 831-5396
WPI Fax: (508) 831-5933
Worcester, MA 01609-2280
************************************************************
>
> I think the operative division at work in SLS and in all sorts of
arenas is
> that these culturalists (I count myself among them) have moved away
from
> studying literature as an aesthetic arena towards studying
literature (and
> culture, science, etc.) as artifacts that require analysis, and
something
> else -- critique. The tool that has enabled this shift is theory.
The bodies
> of theory involved are arcane, and their practitioners sometimes
bear no
> resemblance to the genteel humanist who stands for what a
literature
> professor "should be."
>
> I personally hold that the shift to theory was necessary, and that
the
> shifting grounds of aesthetic interpretation could not hold a
self-reflective
> field of inquiry.
>
> Wayne
> /-------------------------------------------------------/
> Wayne Miller waynem@humnet.ucla.edu
> Germanic Languages 2326 Murphy Hall, UCLA
> Humanities Computing Facility 343 Kinsey Hall, UCLA
> (310) 206-2004 FAX: (310) 825-7428
> /-------------------------------------------------------/
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 4 Mar 1997 19:29:39 -0800
From: Joseph Duemer
Subject: your book
Joe:
_Symptoms of a Finer Age arrived today. I thought I had a handful of
_Static_ left, but have to order some from my publisher. In the
meantime
I'll put _Customs_, my first, in the mail to you. If not there, then in
_Static_ I have been concerned to create a "poetry of
discourse," though
I have drawn more on traditional literary and philosophical texts than
on p-m theory. I'm probably hooked into the tradition differently from
you. I am still looking to clear a space for aesthetic experience,
though I'm willing to take Wittgenstein's (later) view of language, and
ask, of poetry: "What kind of a game are we playing here?" and
then "Are
we playing it well?" It's that second question that runs up
against
textual relativism, of course. (This from a prettry thorough *cultural*
relativist!) Anywho, I have enjoyed the couple of poems of yours I've
read & will have more to say--I always do! Many thanks for your
book--I
look forward to exchanges about our poetics, and also about what it
means/is to be a poet in a technological institution.
- --
- --
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315-262-2466
"Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial,
but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to
mistake it for a universal one."
-- Hannah Arendt
"People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so
pleased with bad."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
