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Literature and Science I

Session 6 - Sunday 9:45-11:15am
Henry Hall 202
Presiding Officer: 
Roswitha Burwick
  1. Tragicomic Irony: Scientific Discourse in Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus . Friederike von Schwerin-High, Pomona College

    Thomas Mann enlisted current scientific (physicochemical, marine-biological, astrophysical, and medical) discourse in Doctor Faustus. Reconfiguring the Faust myth as a biography written by a classics professor and humanist, Mann problematizes and ironizes both humanism and scientism.

  2. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and British Gynecological Science. Elizabeth Raisanen, University of California, Los Angeles

    I argue that in Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein travels first to England, and then to Scotland, because he needs to access the specialized knowledge of four particular English and Scottish scientists (in the fields of galvanism, gigantism, and gynecology) in order to create a female creature.

  3. A Mine Not So Thoroughly Worked: Astronomy and the Universal Dimension of Science in Thomas Hardy's Two on a Tower. Garrett Peck, University of British Columbia

    Hardy's 1882 novel Two on a Tower represents a view of embodied scientific practice; however, it nonetheless illustrates that the erasure of history and enactment of gendered hierarchies were an implicit facet in the production of "objective" knowledge of the Victorian universe.

Session Type: 
Special Session
Session Status: 
Closed