Yes, as I understand it, tension needs to build up to the climax, which may be a confrontation. This will provide the framework for a discussion of evidence. It sounds as if you need a good opener to set the theme–maybe a staged modern argument between scholars?

You might want to study the script of a BBC documentary, maybe on Darwin, for…[Read more]

Thanks, Lila. I will keep that in mind. I am stepping back from the F2F meeting of Galileo and Will Shakespeare to focus on why Shakespeareans get apoplexy over the attempts of astronomers who attempt to read Hamlet (Peter Usher), for example as containing clues to Shakespeare’s knowledge of “the new philosophy” of Copernicus’ heliocentric solar…[Read more]

For a film, you need a narrative arc. This can be a challenge when dramatizing science history and that is something to keep in mind.

I work in 18th and 19th century women’s natural history travel narratives. Some of these accounts may be potentially filmable and I was recently approached by one producer recently for a Biopic. But I would have to…[Read more]

Hi Gloria,

Yes, that does make more sense.  The period is earlier than mine–I work in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a  focus on Romantic poets and “scientists.” Certainly, the moment has come for consilience.  I think a film that shows how the past couple hundred  years are relatively unique in our aggressive separation of the…[Read more]

A project that crosses the arts and the sciences sounds like an interesting one if there is a focus relevant to current issues. I have to bridge the two daily. I have a Ph.D. in chemistry and an M.A. in creative writing and teach both chemistry and writing classes. I find the cultural differences between workers in the sciences and humanities…[Read more]

Hello Gloria and Lisa,

This sounds fascinating. I’m an out-of-towner on this one but the connections are intriguing, especially given their speculative nature. I work on Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe and so have a (deeply) vested interest in crossing the borders between Arts and Sciences. I’ll be watching this space with a lot of…[Read more]

Hi, Lisa,

We chose the two contemporaries because of new information we had from Ewen Whitaker, a British astronomer who has made a working Digges Perspective Glass. After researching that Will and his men stayed at the Digges family home in Stratford, where he almost certainly saw the copy of astronomer Tycho Brahe’s Epistolae (with the name…[Read more]

Hi Gloria,

Just out of curiosity, why Galileo and Shakespeare? There are so many examples of poets and men of science who really did cross the line between arts and sciences. Why not some of them?

Cheers,

Lisa Ann

I will. Grace is in our group, of course, and she brings good students to our discussion. I will pass on your greetings :).

A

“At Portland State University,…”

OMG,  Grace Dillon, one of the essayists in our collection Orbiting Ray Bradbury’s Mars, teaches at your school.

You get old enough (let’s just say a couple years beyond 60) and you start to *know everybody*!  Tell Grace I said “Hi” and “Milli gwetch”–that “thanks” in Anishinaabe. -Glo

==================Bio o…[Read more]

I don’t know as much about Latin American fantastic literature as I’d like, so I’m very interested in what you had to say, Silvia. In general, it always strikes me as odd how conservative academics can be. And in a broader sense, the whole concept of “legitimate” is troublesome because of the power issues underlying who decides what is and is not,…[Read more]

I wish the United States were better at carrying translated editions of works. This sounds like a fascinating anthology. I would love to read it!

I will agree with Josh. However, for Latin America, there is an additional twist. The raise of the fantastic since the mid 1940s until it became the paramount literary “authentic” (for lack of better, quick words) literary form, displaced any other literary form from the center of the cultural field. Debates between realist and fantastic…[Read more]

HOW TO JUSTIFY SF AS SCIENTIFIC  AND WORTH INCLUDING IN CLASS: Tips from a veteran of the struggle

I work with the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory education outreach committee.  That may not sound like fun automatically, but we are planning a workshop around hard science SF, which is less written today than it was in A…[Read more]

Oh dear, it looks like I accidentally posted twice. Sorry!