Literature and Science

Cultural Forms, Conceptual Changes

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Edited by Wai Chee Dimock and Priscilla Wald

Duke University Press

Due/Published December 2002, 228 pages, paper

ISBN 0822365766

A special issue of American Literature

The goal of this special issue is to encourage scholars in both the sciences and the humanities to estrange themselves from their regular ways of thinking. Committed to understanding what each discipline has to teach the other, the contributors explore the changes in topics, approaches, and methodologies in the sciences, technology and the humanities that surface when scholars take seriously the mandate to consider the basic assumptions of each field from the other point of view.

The essays address the mutual impact of literature and science through a range of issues: "geek novels" as a subgenre of literature about science, the relationship of narrative form to risk analysis and ecological disaster, the impact of realism and contemporary developments in neurology and brain biology, and the use of technology in the humanities. The essays also examine how the humanities explore scientific issues such as in vitro fertilization and human existence, cloning and molecular biology, and the concept of time. Contributors. Jay Clayton, Wai Chee Dimock, N. Katherine Hayles, Ursula Heise, Randall Knoper, Martha Nell Smith, Stephanie Turner, Priscilla Wald, Robyn Wiegman