Literature, Culture and Science

The Literature, Culture and Science research cluster was created in 2009. It is headed up by Professor Sharon Ruston and includes Dr Kate Adams, Dr Janice Allan, Professor Lucie Armitt, Dr Carson Bergstrom, Dr Scott Brewster, Professor Peter Buse, Professor Andrew Cooper, and Dr Gillian James.

The cluster has six main strands, some of which overlap with the work of other research clusters in the Centre for English Literature and Language. We are interested in:

• the intersections between the literature and science of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Allan, Armitt, Bergstrom, Cooper, Ruston);
• literature and medicine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: particularly, monstrosity, the gothic, and psychoanalysis (Allan, Armitt, Brewster);
• the history and use of technology in twentieth- and twenty-first century theatre and film (Adams, Buse);
• science fiction and fantasy, in critical and creative practice (Armitt, James);
• environmentalism and eco-criticism (Adams, Armitt, Brewster, Ruston);
• the interactive text in creative practice: prose, poetry, and performance (Adams, James. )

Current Projects

Sharon Ruston is Co-editor of The Collected Letters of Sir Humphry Davy and his Circle with Professor Tim Fulford (advisory editors: Professors Frank James, Jan Golinski, David Knight).

Research Students

• Jessica Roberts, 'Vitalism in the Periodical Press' (PhD 2010-13)
• Wahida Amin, ‘Science and Poetry: The Case of Humphry Davy’ (AHRC Funded PhD with the Royal Institution; 2009-12)
  Abby Bentham, PhD on transgression and psychosis in literary, filmic and televisual texts (2009-12)
• Lucy Burnett, PhD on contemporary eco poetics and poetry (2009-12)

Funded Doctoral Training Events specific to this cluster

From 2009 to 2011 the University of Salford led a new AHRC-funded doctoral training programme for taught PhD students, ‘ Theories and Methods: Literature, Science, and Medicine’. We delivered this training in collaboration with eleven other partners: the Universities of Keele, Leicester, Manchester, King’s College London and the London Consortium, and the Science Museum, National Maritime Museum, Museum of Science and Industry, Royal College of Surgeons, Royal Institution of Great Britain, and the Wellcome Library.

Key Publications

Adams, Kate, I Found this Dirt under my Fingernails Live Art at Emergency (The Green Room, Manchester, 2 October 2009): a performance exploring the tension between the everyday passage of time and a heightened sense of being in space and time.

Allan, Janice, ‘“Conversing with Monstrosities”: evolutionary theory and contemporary responses to the novels of Wilkie Collins’ in M. Llewellyn and D. Birch (eds), Conflict and Difference in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Palgrave, 2010).

Armitt, Lucie, Fantasy Fiction (New York: Continuum, 2005).

Brewster, Scott, ‘John Burnside: Poetry as the Space of Withdrawal.’ Poetry and Geography: Space and Place in Post-War Poetry. Ed. Neal Alexander and David Cooper. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013. (forthcoming)

Bergstrom, Carson, The Rise of New-Science Epistemological, Linguistic, and Ethical Ideals and the Lyric Genre in the Eighteenth Century (Edwin Mellen Press, 2002).

Buse, Peter, ‘Polaroid after digital: Technology, Cultural Form, and the social practices of snapshot photography,’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 24:2 (2010): 215-230.

James, Gill, The Prophecy (London: The Red Telephone, 2009).

Ruston, Sharon, Creating Romanticism: Case Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine in the 1790s (Palgrave Macmillan, June 2013).

Teaching

There are a number of modules that deal with relationships between science, medicine and literature, including The Romantic Period and Victorian Literature (level 2). In other modules the concerns of this research cluster are a particular focus, including: Monstrous Bodies (level two), Green Writing (level 3), Writing the City (level 3), and Gothic: Modernity and Monstrosity (MA level).

Forthcoming Events

Professor Sharon Ruston will be speaking at the University of London’s Arts Week on 23 May 2013 about Mary Wollstonecraft and Natural History.

Previous Events

• Prof Sharon Ruston gave one of a public lecture ‘Natural History and the Rights of Woman’, Royal Society (September 2012); watch and hear this at: http://royalsociety.org/events/2012/rights-of-woman/
• The University of Salford’s Acoustic Research Centre, working with artist Luke Jerram, have created a huge Aeolian harp; hear Sharon Ruston’s podcast.
• Lucie Armitt convened a doctoral training workshop on 'Feminist cyber/sf fiction' for the PG CWWN training event held at the University of Leicester on 23rd October 2010;
• 30 June 2010: 'Reading, Writing and Performing Mental Health and Well-Being', a one-day symposium examining the connections between the Humanities and Mental Health in the University of Salford.
• 27 January 2010: Slow Art in Progress event at the University of Salford.
• 15 January 2010: one day symposium for the Literature, Culture and Science research cluster: speakers included Dr Laurence Coupe (MMU) and Professor Clare Brant (KCL).
• 4 December 2009: one-day conference: ‘Thomas de Quincey, Manchester and Medicine, 1785–1859’ held at the University of Salford, sponsored by the British Association for Romantic Studies and the British Society for Literature and Science.

Beyond the Literature, Science and Culture research cluster

The research cluster intersects with a number of the wider University’s research objectives, from three of the five strategic themes identified in scoping studies (health, energy, media), to public engagement work being done in other schools, and to related research in the School of Arts & Media.

Within and beyond our School, Myriam Salama-Carr co-guest edited a special edition of the journal The Translator on ‘Science in Translation’ (17: 2, 2011). Composer Alan Williams worked with Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre and the BBC to create Wonder: A Scientific Oratorio and Lecturer in Future Media, Yu-Wei Lin works on ‘hacker culture’ (School of Arts & Media). We have also formed links with the Mental Health Unit in the School of Nursing and Midwifery.