[Discussion] Darwin and Contemporary Culture

[sule tarakcioglu]

CFP: Darwin and Contemporary Culture (3/18/04; MLA)

Proposed Special Session for the MLA '04 in Philadelphia, Dec. 27-30, 2004.

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection has provided a powerful
spur to writers, informing works ranging from H.G. Wells's The Time 
Machine to
Ian McEwan's Enduring Love.  Darwin's thought has had an equally 
powerful impact
on the social sciences, spawning the politics of Social Darwinism and the
more recent discourse of sociobiology.  Yet literary and cultural 
theorists have
remained surprisingly quiet in engaging the underlying meanings of the
cultural deployment of evolution -- despite Darwin's sometimes hidden 
influence on
much contemporary poststructuralist theory.  This panel seeks to 
consider how
contemporary literature, film and theory have engaged both Darwin and his
would-be followers.

Topics might include:
- Evolution and science fiction
- Darwin and pragmatism
- Darwin and feminism
- Darwin and Freud
- Mannheim, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Foucault, and critiques of scientific 
discourse
- The politics of evolutionary psychology
- Dawkins' idea of the meme and its applicability the reading of literary
texts
- The "gay gene"
- Evolution and representations of sex and gender
- Creation "science"
- Social Darwinism
- Evolution and theories of the post-human
- Darwin and modernism
- The representation of consciousness in literature and evolution

Please send 300 word abstracts and one-page C.V.s to Jonathan Greenberg at
greenbergj@mail.Montclair.edu by Thursday, March 18.