october 12 - 13, 2012 - Hanse

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE UNDER THE LITERARY MICROSCOPE
FMS PREPARATORY WORKSHOP II
OCTOBER 12 - 13, 2012
Organizers: Susan M. Gaines & Norbert Schaffeld
University of Bremen
Funding: University of Bremen and Canadian partner,
University of Guelph, and the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg
Venues:
MARUM Rm 2070/2080
University of Bremen
Leobener Strasse
28359 Bremen
Germany
www.marum.de/en/
BACKGROUND
This workshop is part of an effort to build the long-term, multi-institutional research and fellowship
program "Fiction Meets Science: The World of Science under the Literary Microscope" (FMS). On
June 30, 2012 the FMS team submitted a preliminary grant proposal to the Volkswagen Foundation's
"Key Issues for Research and Society" initiative (Schlüsselthemen für Wissenschaft und
Gesellschaft). Workshop participants should all have read a copy of this short proposal. If successful,
the Key Issues grant will fund FMS for an initial 3-6 years. A decision on the preliminary proposal
will be announced this Fall—whether before, during, or after this workshop is unknown. We are
forging ahead with development of our ideas for the program in preparation for submitting a fulllength proposal—if our preliminary VW proposal is successful, this would be due in February 2013.
WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES
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Experiment with the format for the FMS author readings and talk series.
Begin outreach for the FMS scientists network and for the public reading groups
Establish a context for FMS in literature and science studies
Build background expertise for FMS literary scholars and sociologists
Get feedback on FMS projects from guest scholars
Establish links between FMS projects and develop common languages for interchange of ideas
and sharing results across projects and disciplines

THE VENUES
On Friday, we'll meet at the University of Bremen's Center for Marine Environmental Sciences
(MARUM; www.MARUM.de/en/index.html). Several key members of MARUM are on the FMS
team, and we hope to be recruiting more for our network of scientists and reading groups. Interested
scientists are invited to drop in on the afternoon talks or browse our book table.
On Saturday, we'll meet at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg/Institute for Advanced Study (HWK;
www.h-w-k.de/en ). The HWK invites scholars and scientists from around the world to spend 3 - 10
months working on individual or group research projects in the marine sciences, neuro- and
cognitive sciences, social sciences, or energy research. Fellows live at the Institute, making use of
laboratories and collaborating with colleagues at the surrounding research institutions. The HWK is
conceived as the focal point of the FMS fellowship program, which supports the creation of new
science novels by providing fellowships for selected writers and integrating them into the region's
scientific community.
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Agenda
Note: Afternoon talks from 14:30 to 19:00 h, including the guest reception on Saturday, are open to
guest participation, with pre-registration.
Friday, October 12
Venue: Rm 2070, MARUM Bldg, University of Bremen
10:00 – 10:30
Arrivals (greetings, book table browsing, coffee)
10:30 – 10:40
Welcome and Introduction to Workshop (Reto Weiler, Susan Gaines)
10:40 – 13:30
FMS Project Presentations

Back to the Future: Science in British Fiction from the Seventeenth Century
to the 1950s (Nicholas Russell, 20 mins)

Literature and Fiction in Contemporary Multi-Disciplinary Science Journals
(Anton Kirchhofer, Anna Auguscik, 20 mins)

Reading Science Novels: a Sociological Perspective on Reception and
Impact (Uwe Schimank, 10 mins)
(Discussion Moderators: Alison Abbot, David Kirby)
BREAK (~ 12:00 - 12:15)

Laughing Mice: Humor as Epistemological Strategy in Contemporary
Science Novels (Katrin Berndt, 10 mins)
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Fiction and Science in Autobiographies by Scientists (Martina WagnerEgelhaaf, 10 mins)

Gender in Science Films (Jennifer Henke, 10 mins)

The Question of Ethics in the Recent Depiction of Science in Literature
(Julia Boll, 10 mins)
(Discussion Moderators: Bruce Clarke, Laura Otis)
13:30 – 14:30
LUNCH [at MARUM]
14:30 – 16:00
Scientists as Characters in Fiction

Whatever Happened to the Mad, Bad Scientist? The Rise and Demise of
Cultural Archetypes in Fiction and Film (Roslynn Haynes, 50 mins)

A Multi-Dimensional Scientist Character? (Natalie Roxburgh & Anton
Kirchhofer, 20 mins)
General Discussion (Moderator: Peter Weingart)
16:00 – 16:30
COFFEE BREAK
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16:30 – 18:50
Wegener's Jigsaw Reading and Discussion [public]
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Author (Clare Dudman, 40 mins)
Formal Comments:

Literary scholar (Norbert Schaffeld, 10 mins)
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Science historian (Reinhard Krause, 10 mins)

Geologist (Gerold Wefer, 10 mins)
General Questions and Discussion (Moderator: Susan Gaines)
Tour of the MARUM sediment core lab (Gerold Wefer, ~45 mins)
19:30
WORKSHOP DINNER
Thanks to mbr targeting for sharing the cost.
Saturday, October 13
Venue: Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, Delmenhorst
10:00 -11:30
FMS in Context

The Rise of "Literature and Science" as an Academic Field: Main Themes,
Results, and Conflicts (Bruce Clarke & Dirk Vanderbeke, 50 mins)
Discussion (Moderator: Don Bruce)

Interdisciplinary Communication for FMS (Susan Gaines, 10 mins)
Discussion: (Moderator: Don Bruce)
11:30 – 11:45
BREAK
11:45 – 12:30
Integrating FMS Projects and Synthesizing Results: Adapting a
Sociological Method for Interdisciplinary Use.

12:30 – 13:15
The FMS Content Issues (Uwe Schimank, 15 mins)
Discussion: Can/should we use the Content Issues as a medium for
transporting results between FMS projects? How? (Moderators: Don Bruce,
Jochen Gläser)
The FMS Creative Component

Creating Fictional Worlds: What's so Different about Science?
(Susan Gaines, Simon Mawer, Clare Dudman)
13:15 – 14:30
LUNCH [at HWK]
14:30 – 15:10
•
Literature, Science, and Cognitive Styles (Laura Otis, 30 mins.)
Discussion (Moderator: Roslynn Haynes)
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15:10 – 15:50
•
15:50 –16:30
•
16:30 – 17:00
COFFEE BREAK
17:00 – 18:30
Mendel's Dwarf Reading/Discussion [public]

Fiction Is to Science as the Mind is to the Brain: Richard Powers’
"Scientifictions" (Jan Kucharzewski, 30 mins)
Discussion (Moderator: Reto Weiler)
Lab Coats in Hollywood: Scientists' Backstage Role in the Production of
Fiction Films (David Kirby, 30 mins)
Discussion (Moderator: Raymond Haynes)
Author (Simon Mawer, 40 mins)
Formal comments:

Literary scholar (Stephan-Alexander Ditze, 10 mins)

Sociologist (Peter Weingart, 10 mins)
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Geneticist (Wilfried Wackernagel, 10 mins)
Questions and open discussion (Moderator: Susan Gaines)
18:30 – 19:20
REFRESHMENTS AND RECEPTION
19:30 – 21:15
WORKSHOP DINNER [at HWK]
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WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS
1.
Alison Abbott did doctoral and postdoctoral research in pharmacology, before moving into the
world of scientific publishing. Since 1992, she has been the Munich-based European
correspondent for Nature, covering European science policy and a variety of scientific topics.
She also contributes to Nature's Books & Arts section, where she has often reviewed or written
about new science novels.
2.
Anna Auguscik is completing her dissertation on the role of literary prizes for the literary
marketplace, "Prizing Debate: Literary Awards and Contemporary Literary Communication in
the UK," at the Institute of English and American Studies at the University of Oldenburg.
3.
Katrin Berndt is the author of Female Identity in Contemporary Zimbabwean Fiction (Eckhard
Breitinger, 2005) andYoko Ono – In Her Own Write (Tectum Verlag 1999), and editor, with
Lena Steveker, of Heroism in the Harry Potter Series (Ashgate 2011). She is an Assistant
Professor in the Department for English-Speaking Cultures at the University of Bremen, where
she is completing a monograph titled Friendship and the Formation of the British Novel from
1760 to 1830.
4.
Julia Boll holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, where she wrote her thesis on the
representation of war and conflict on the contemporary stage. Her book The New War Plays will
be published by Palgrave in 2013. She was director of the Scottish Universities' International
Summer School and on the staff of the Edinburgh Review, and she has been an editor of the
international poetry and prose magazine newleaf for nine years.
5.
Stephan Bornholdt's work focuses on the ways in which simple elementary forces and
constituents interact to generate complex systems and processes—life, evolution, brains,
genomes, immune systems, societies—and is inherently interdisciplinary. He is a professor of
physics and leader of the Complex Systems Lab in the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the
University of Bremen.
6.
Donald Bruce's research has focused on the interface between 19th century literature and
science, digital applications in the humanities, and cultural theory. He has recently begun
research for a historical novel about Antoine Lavoisier inspired by a 1788 painting by JeanLouis David that hangs in the Metropolitan Art Museum. He is Professor of French and Dean of
the College of Arts at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
7.
Bruce Clarke is a former president of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts who
works in literature and science from the 19th century to the present, with special interests in
systems theory and ecology. He is Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Literature and Science at
Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, USA.
8.
Stephan-Alexander Ditze's research interests include imagology, content- and languageintegrated learning, literary translation, utopian fiction, literature didactics, and film literacy. He
is author of America and the Americans in Postwar British Fiction: An Imagological Study of
Selected Novels (American Studies Monograph Series 2006), and is currently completing a
Habilitation thesis about representations of the biotechnology revolution in Anglophone
literature and film. Dr. Ditze teaches English, politics and philosophy at the Max-PlanckGymnasium in Delmenhorst.
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9.
Clare Dudman has been an academic and industrial research chemist as well as a teacher and a
university lecturer in creative writing. She has had four novels published (most recently A Place
of Meadows and Tall Trees and 98 Reasons For Being) and has won three awards for her
writing. Dr. Dudman lives and works in Manchester, U.K.
10. Sina Farzin did her Master's thesis in German literature and in sociology, and her Ph.D. in
sociology. She is currently a Research Associate at the Institute for Empirical and Applied
Sociology at the University of Bremen. In 2013 she will take up a post as Junior Professor at the
University of Hamburg, where she plans to begin building her first independent research group
with her FMS project.
11. Susan M. Gaines did graduate work in physical organic and marine chemistry, before
abandoning the laboratory to pursue her vocation as a writer. Her novel Carbon Dreams was an
experiment with science in literary fiction, and her non-fiction book, Echoes of Life: What Fossil
Molecules Reveal about Earth History (OUP 2009, with Eglinton and Rullkötter), was an
experiment with narrative in the presentation of scientific results. She came to Germany as a
HWK Fellow in 2002 and is now "Writer in Residence" at the University of Bremen.
12. Jochen Gläser is a sociologist of science whose major research interest is the interaction of
epistemic and institutional factors in the shaping of research content. Other research interests
include the sociology of communities and the methodology of qualitative social research. Dr.
Gläser is a senior researcher at the Center for Technology and Society in Berlin.
13. Raymond Haynes worked as an astrophysicist and science communicator at CSIRO (Australia's
national science agency) for over thirty years. His research papers, books, and popular science
articles have dealt with fields as diverse as low-frequency radio astronomy, molecules in the
Milky Way and other galaxies, supernova remnants, the role of magnetic fields in the evolution
of galaxies, and the role of scientists in today’s society. Professor Haynes is a Fellow of the
Australian Institute of Physics and the Astronomical Society of Australia, and a Member of the
International Astronomical Union.
14. Luz Maria Hernandez is a PhD candidate at the Bielefeld Graduate School of History and
Sociology. Her academic background includes a degree in visual communication from the
Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi in Mexico, and a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary
Media Studies from Bielefeld University. She is currently working on her dissertation: an
empirical study about the representation of science in animated series for children. Her research
interests include science depictions in popular culture, public perceptions of science, scientific
communication, mass media genres, animation, comic, film, television series and publicity.
15. Roslynn Haynes holds degrees in biochemistry and literature, and has long been interested in
the interfaces and cross-influences between science, literature, art, and religion. Her monographs
include From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature (John
Hopkins Univ. Press 1994), and Tasmanian Visions: Landscapes in Writing, Art and
Photography (Polymath Press 2006). She is Honorary Associate Professor in the School of
English, Media and Performing Arts at the University of New South Wales, and an Honorary
Fellow at the University of Tasmania in Australia.
16. Jennifer Henke recently finished her dissertation in the University of Bremen doctoral group
“Textuality of Film.” Her book Unsex Me Here – Gender and Space in Contemporary
Shakespeare Films is forthcoming in 2013.
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17. David Kirby was an evolutionary geneticist, before leaving bench science to study the
interactions among science, media, and cultural meanings. He is the author of Lab Coats in
Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and Cinema, and he is currently working on a book that
examines how cinema served as a battleground over science’s role in influencing morality. He is
Senior Lecturer in Science Communication Studies at the University of Manchester, U.K.
18. Anton Kirchhofer's research interests and areas of publication include the media and the
cultural settings and discursive environment of literature; literary theory and its relation with
literary production; and the connections between modernity, literature and secularity, and
between literature and science. His doctoral thesis was on passion and sex in the eighteenth
century English novel, and his Habilitation thesis dealt with literary criticism in the nineteenth
century periodical market. He is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oldenburg.
19. Reinhard Krause did his undergraduate studies in physics, with an emphasis in theoretical
astrophysics, and his doctoral thesis in the history of science. He spent many years at sea as a
merchant marine and has participated in several research Arctic and Antarctic research
expeditions. His research focuses on the history of science between 1860 and 1940, and he has
written numerous articles and books on the subject. He is currently at work on a paper about
polar research and associated geographic and scientific knowledge in science fiction up to the
1930s. Dr. Krause is a member of the Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research
in Bremerhaven
20. Jan Kucharzewski is author of Propositions about Life: Reengaging Literature and
Science (Winter, 2011) and co-editor of two essay collections, Hello, I Say, It's Me:
Contemporary Reconstructions of Self and Subjectivity (WVT, 2009) and Ideas of Order:
Narrative Patterns in the Novels of Richard Powers (Winter, 2012). He is currently at work on a
monograph about the construction of masculinity and the representation of crisis in 19th and 20th
century American literature and film. Dr. Kucharzewski is Assistant Professor for American
Studies at the University of Hamburg.
21. Grit Laudel's research in the sociology of science focuses on the impacts that institutions have
on research content, thus linking sociology and science policy studies, and on evaluating and
developing methods used in science studies. Dr. Laudel is a Research Associate at the Center for
Higher Education Policy Studies at University of Twente in the Netherlands.
22. Simon Mawer is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels, including The Glass Room,
which was short-listed for the Booker Prize, and most recently, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky.
He graduated in zoology from the University of Oxford and was a secondary school biology
teacher in Rome for over thirty years. Though Mendel's Dwarf is the only one of his novels that
might be classified as a science novel, this background is apparent in a number of his other
works, including a popular non-fiction account of Gregor Mendel's life and the subsequent
history of genetics. He lives in Rome, Italy.
23. Laura Otis holds degrees in biochemistry and neuroscience, and worked in labs for eight years
before completing her PhD in Comparative Literature. Her research concerns the ways that
scientific and literary thinking interact, memory, identity formation, and communication
technologies. Publications include Müller's Lab (Oxford, 2007) and Networking:
Communicating with Bodies and Machines in the Nineteenth Century (Michigan, 2001). She is
Professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia USA and a frequent guest scholar
at the MPI for the History of Science in Berlin.
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24. Natalie Roxburgh was awarded a Ph.D. in Literatures in English from Rutgers University in
2011 and is currently completing a monograph about how English economic history affected the
rise of the novel in the eighteenth century. Her interests include the history of the novel,
contemporary fiction, and the history and philosophy of science. She came to Germany from the
U.S. in 2011 to take up a post as Lecturer in English for Academic Purposes at the University of
Oldenburg.
25. Jürgen Rullkötter's studies the molecular make-up of fossil organic matter and its application
to understanding how petroleum forms, microbial transformations of oil in natural seeps and
anthropogenic spills, and ancient environments and climates. He became interested in science
novels after reading Die Ölschieferskelet and Carbon Dreams. In 2011, he and Gaines co-lead a
summer seminar on science in fiction for German scholarship students. He is Professor of
Organic Geochemistry and Director of the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of Marine
Environments at the University of Oldenburg.
26. Nicholas Russell has done research on the history of technology and agricultural science, taught
applied biology in a College of Technology, co-directed a vocational science education initiative
for the Nuffield Foundation, held a Wellcome Trust Fellowship for a study on scientific
creativity, taught science communication, and done freelance science and education journalism.
He directed the Science Communication Group at Imperial College for over a decade, and his
most recent book is Communicating Science, Professional, Popular, Literary (CUP 2009). Dr.
Russell is Emeritus Reader at Imperial College, London.
27. Norbert Schaffeld studied English literature, history, and philosophy in Germany and England.
His interests include British literature, Shakespeare adaptations, Australian and Canadian
culture, film studies, the historical novel, and the science novel. He is Dean of the Faculty of
Linguistics and Literature and holds the Chair of English Literature at the University of Bremen.
28. Uwe Schimank is interested in general sociological theory and, in particular, theories of modern
society. His past work includes empirical studies in organizational sociology, governance
research, science and higher education studies, and economic sociology. He is Professor of
Sociological Theory at the University of Bremen
29. Uwe Spörl's research interests have included narrative theory, hermeneutics and literary theory,
metafiction, comparative contemporary literature, and the crime novel. He is the author of the
Basislexikon Literaturwissenschaft (2004) and has published in numerous fields, including the
relationship between knowledge and literature, modes of literary perception, space and order, the
concept of genius in literary history, Expressionism, and the New Objectivity. He is a Senior
Lecturer in modern German literature and Dean of Studies at the University of Bremen.
30. Dirk Vanderbeke's books include Worüber man nicht sprechen kann, which discusses aspects
of the unrepresentable in philosophy, science and literature, and Theoretische Welten und
literarische Transformationen, which examines debates about science's role(s) in contemporary
literature. He has also published on Joyce, Pynchon, Milton, science fiction, self-similarity,
vampires and graphic novels, among other topics. He is Professor of English Literature at the
Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena and holds a permanent guest-professorship at the
University of Zielona Góra in Poland.
31. Wilfried Wackernagel is a professor of genetics whose research emphasis has been on the
molecular mechanisms of genetic recombination, processes of horizontal gene transfer, and
safety issues of transgenic plants. He is a Professor Emeritus in the Institute of Biology and
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Environmental Sciences at the University of Oldenburg and a member of various national and
international committees and working groups dealing with biological safety, gene technology,
and novel genetic methods in plant breeding.
32. Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf's fields of specialization include autobiography and autofiction;
literature, politics, and religion; questions of authorship; rhetoric; theory of literature; literature
and science, and literature studies as cultural or gender studies. She is Professor of Modern
German Literature at the University of Münster.
33. Gerold Wefer's research has focused on sedimentation processes in shallow waters and particle
fluxes in the oceans, benthic foraminifera ecology, carbonate production in boreal and tropical
seas, distributions of stable isotopes in calcareous organisms, and ancient climates. Well-known
for his efforts to promote public awareness and understanding of science, he was awarded the
German Research Foundation's "Communicator Prize" in 2010. Professor Wefer is the founding
Director of MARUM and "The Oceans in the Earth System" Excellence Cluster at the
University of Bremen.
34. Reto Weiler's research has focused on the neurobiology of vision and, in particular, on
understanding the physiology and functions of the retina. He is a Professor of Neurobiology and
head of the "Dynamics and Stabilisation of Retinal Processing" Research Unit at the University
of Oldenburg, as well as the Director of the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg.
35. Peter Weingart has published widely on science policy, science advice in the political sphere,
the interaction between science and the media, science communication, and cultural
representations of science. He is the managing editor of the Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook
and editor-in-chief of Minerva, as well as Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Sociology of
Science and Science Policy at the University of Bielefeld, where he directed the Institute for
Science and Technology Studies and the Institute of Interdisciplinary Research for many years.
36. Hildegard Westphal's research focuses on the effects of environmental change on biotic
communities in tropical shallow water areas. She works in a strongly interdisciplinary context
that stretches across the natural and social sciences. Her interest in science in literature began in
a project of the Junge Akademie of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and
Humanities and the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, in which artists and scientists
had the chance to try out new ideas together. She is Director of the Leibniz Center for Tropical
Marine Ecology (ZMT) and head of its Department of Biogeochemistry and Geology.
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