***apologies for cross-posting*** ***please distribute widely*** CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT THE SECOND EUROPEAN CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE: EXPERIMENTING ARTS AND SCIENCES May 8-12, 2002. FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS AND WORKSHOPS The second European conference of the International Society for Literature and Science (SLS) will take place at University of Aarhus, Denmark, May 8-12, 2002. The conference will gather scholars from human, social, medical, technical and natural sciences as well as artists, who are interested in inter- and transdisciplinary approaches and linkages between the study of culture, literature, visual arts and technoscience, and between science and the arts. Culture and technoscience used to be regarded as disparate activities and fields of study that referred to separate spheres of society, and to different epistemologies, methodologies and practices. But in recent years, a growing number of scholars from many disciplines have forged transversal lines and links between the study of culture/literature/visual arts and technoscience, exploring issues such as for example * links between fact and fiction * transversal lines between science and story-telling * links between cultural imaginaries and scientific practices * semiotic-material practices * how metaphors matter and matter performs metaphorically * intersections and incommensurabilities between visual arts, literature, culture and technoscience * translations between physical and virtual spaces * cyborg identities and cyborg bodies * feminist and postcolonial perspectives in technoscience studies The conference will be a forum for exchange of ideas between senior and junior researchers committed to the exploration of such issues and to experiments with transgression of boundaries between the formerly disparate fields of culture/literature/visual arts and technoscience. In particular, the conference will give space to scholars who want to compare notes cross-nationally and cross-Atlantically. Many European scholars seem to be committed to the study of the new interdisciplinary field of culture & technoscience studies without knowing about the International Society for Literature and Science that originally was started by US-colleagues. The first European conference of the society, held in Brussels in April 2000, initiated a much needed cross-Atlantic dialogue. The idea is that the second conference in May 2002 shall take this process important steps further. Proposals for papers and workshops are invited from both senior and junior scholars from all disciplines who are interested in the links and border transgressions between the study of culture, literature, visual arts and technoscience. Abstracts for papers and workshops (2-300 words) should be sent to [log in to unmask] before Oct. 1, 2001. SLS c/o: Randi Markussen, Associate Professor, Ph.D. Dept. of Information and Media Studies University of Aarhus Niels Juels Gade 84 8200 Aarhus N Denmark Phone (switchboard) +45 89 42 11 11 Phone (direct) +45 89 42 19 66 Telefax +45 89 42 19 52 Conference website from September 1: http: //imv.au.dk/SLS-Europe The City of Aarhus can be visited 'virtually' at http://www.aarhus-tourist.dk/index.htm and University of Aarhus at http://www.au.dk/en/ SLS HISTORY Literature and science has existed as a field of study in the US since the 1920s, when the Modern Language Association established a division of that name. Its practitioners were almost solely literary scholars, and its reigning paradigm was the "influence" model that focused on the one-way interaction from science to literature. By the 1980s there was a strong desire to open the field to a greater number of disciplines and approaches. Discussions among a small group of scholars, envisioned a new Society for Literature and Science (SLS) where scholars from a broad range of fields, and particularly the sciences, would feel welcome, and where the discursive arena would belong to no single discipline or group of disciplines. SLS was officially launched in 1985 and held the first of its annual meetings in 1987. The Society's deliberate refusal to delimit "literature and science" encouraged the participation of scholars from many fields whose common commitment was the investigation of the representations of rhetoric or the practice of science. Thus, SLS meetings began to attract those interested in visual and aural as well as textual representations of science. An important stage in the Society's development was the establishment of its journal, Configurations that first appeared in 1993. Although a small number of European colleagues have attended annual meetings in the US, their numerous contributions to Configurations reflect the much larger number who share interests among themselves and with their American colleagues. In order to provide a forum for these European scholars to interact, the first European SLS conference took place in Brussels in April 2000. Its success provided the momentum for the second European conference that will take place in Aarhus, Denmark, in May 2002. Here, the establishment of a European SLS branch will also be discussed. PROGRAMME COMMITTEE - SECOND EUROPEAN CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE, - AARHUS, DENMARK, 2002 Yves Abrioux, Université Paris 3, France, [log in to unmask] Noëlle Batt, University of Toulouse, France, [log in to unmask] Gustaaf Cornelis, Free University of Brussels, Belgium, [log in to unmask] Florian Dombois, National Research Center for Information Technology, Schloss Birlinghoven, Germany [log in to unmask] Mischa Peters, Netherlands Research School of Women's Studies, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, [log in to unmask] Diana Davidson, Dept. of English, University of York, UK, [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask] Johan Fornäs, The National Institute for Working Life, Programme for Work & Culture, Linköping University, Campus Norrköping, Sweden, [log in to unmask] Mark Elam, Dept. of Culture, Society and Media Production, Linköping University, Sweden, and Dept. of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, [log in to unmask] Solveig Jülich, Dept. of Culture, Society and Media Production, Linköping University, Sweden, [log in to unmask] Randi Markussen, Dept. of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark, [log in to unmask] Finn Olesen, Dept. of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark, [log in to unmask] Casper Bruun Jensen, Dept. of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark, [log in to unmask] Mette Bryld, Dept. of Russian and East European Studies, University of Southern Denmark, Odense University, [log in to unmask] Nina Lykke, Dept. of Cultural Studies, University of Southern Denmark, Odense University, Denmark + Dept. of Gender Studies, Linköping University, Sweden, [log in to unmask] + [log in to unmask] Anne Scott Sørensen, Dept. of Cultural Studies, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, [log in to unmask] Ingunn Moser, Senter for teknologi, innovation og kultur, Univ. of Oslo, Norway, [log in to unmask] Britta Brenna, Senter for teknologi, innovation og kultur, Univ. of Oslo, Norway, [log in to unmask] Steve Weininger, Worcester Polytechnic Inst., USA, [log in to unmask] William Paulson , University of Michigan, [log in to unmask] Jay Labinger, California Institute of Technology, USA, [log in to unmask] Ken Knoespel, School of History, Technology and Society, School of Literature, Communication and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology [log in to unmask] Hugh Crawford, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, [log in to unmask] Susan Squier, Women's Studies and English, Penn State University, USA, [log in to unmask] Carol Colatrella, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, [log in to unmask] + [log in to unmask]