CFP: Science and Culture in Latin America: Transmission, Circulation, Exchange

SCIENCE AND CULTURE IN LATIN AMERICA: TRANSMISSION, CIRCULATION, EXCHANGE

Saturday, 18 April 2015
Trinity College, University of Oxford (UK)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Paper abstracts are invited for “Science and Culture in Latin America: Transmission, Circulation, Exchange”, a one-day international symposium to be held in Trinity College, University of Oxford on Saturday, 18 April 2015. In this inaugural event of the AHRC-funded research network on Science in Text and Culture in Latin America, our aim is to discuss (inter)disciplinary questions raised by academic and creative explorations of science and culture in Latin America. We also seek to find points of connection and divergence between the study of this cross-fertilization in the region and the frameworks that have informed the study of science and cultural practices elsewhere. We thus invite contributions that ask how creativity is imagined in science, literature and other forms of cultural and artistic practice, and how the methodological frameworks of literature and science studies translate to the Latin American context. Confirmed speakers include Jens Andermann (Universität Zürich), María del Pilar Blanco (Oxford), Sandra Gasparini (Universidad de Buenos Aires), and Gabriela Nouzeilles (Princeton University).

We invite proposals for 25-minute papers for panel sessions, and 10-minute position papers for a forum on current research directions. The former should explicitly address one or more of the broader methodological and disciplinary issues listed below; the latter may focus on any aspect of research on the relationship between science and cultural texts in Latin America. Papers may be given in English or Spanish.

Paper topics may include the following:

1. (1)  explorations of aesthetic and scientific cross-fertilizations in Latin American arts, including literature, film and other practices;

2. (2)  examinations of how aesthetic innovations are encouraged by experimentation with the language of science;

3. (3)  discussions of the methodological frameworks employed in science & culture studies, and their relevance in the Latin American context;

4. (4)  investigations of the historical study of science’s relationship to the arts across different cultural contexts, in Latin America and beyond;

5. (5)  discussions that explore whether we might hypothesize a Latin American specificity within the growing field of literature and science studies across different regions.

Abstracts should be 250-300 words in length. Please email your submissions, together with a C.V., to Joanna Page (jep29@cam.ac.uk) and María del Pilar Blanco (maria.blanco@trinity.ox.ac.uk) by 1 September 2014, specifying whether you wish your paper to be considered for a panel session or the research forum. All participants in panel sessions will be asked to circulate their papers in advance of the conference; those giving short presentations in the research forum are also welcome to circulate longer versions of their papers in advance.

One travel bursary of US$1,250 will be awarded, on a competitive basis, to a participant who is resident in North, Central or South America and either currently studying for a doctorate or within three years of having received their doctorate (by the date of the conference).

“Science and Culture in Latin America: Transmission, Circulation, Exchange” is the first of four international symposia that comprise the AHRC-funded research network on Science in Text and Culture in Latin America, which will run from 2014 to 2016. For more information on the network’s schedule of events, please visit our website (http://www.latin-

american.cam.ac.uk/science-text-culture) or email Joanna Page (jep29@cam.ac.uk) and María del Pilar Blanco (maria.blanco@trinity.ox.ac.uk).