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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]