Themes of the Seminar on Science and Literature

Proposed Sub-Themes

1. Literary Representations of Scientific Knowledge Systems

This strand invites inquiry into how literature interprets, critiques, or reimagines scientific paradigms—whether Newtonian mechanics, evolutionary biology, quantum uncertainty, or data science. Papers may explore how narrative transforms technical knowledge into cultural meaning, or how literary discourse interrogates claims of objectivity, neutrality, and authority embedded in scientific frameworks.

2. Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Utopias and Dystopias

Science fiction has long functioned as a testing ground for ethical and technological futures. From Frankenstein to Brave New World and The Handmaid's Tale, literary imagination anticipates, critiques, and reshapes scientific ambition. This sub-theme encourages exploration of speculative writing as a space where science becomes both stimulus and site of resistance.

3. Medical Humanities and Narratives of Health and Illness

How do literary texts humanize clinical discourse? How do illness narratives challenge biomedical reductionism? This theme examines narrative medicine, patient testimony, disability studies, bioethics, and the phenomenology of suffering. It foregrounds literature’s role in restoring subjectivity within scientific healthcare systems.

4. Spatial Humanities and the Discourses of Space Travel

The exploration of outer space is not merely technological but profoundly imaginative. Literary and cinematic engagements with cosmology, astrophysics, and planetary travel open questions of empire, colonization, and human expansion. Works such as Interstellar and 2001: A Space Odyssey offer fertile ground for analyzing the intersection of scientific aspiration and metaphysical speculation.

5. Environmental Humanities and Climate Narratives

Climate change has generated new literary forms—cli-fi, eco-poetry, eco-criticism—that respond to scientific data with narrative urgency. How does literature translate planetary crisis into affective and ethical consciousness? Can storytelling mobilize ecological responsibility where statistics alone fail?

6. Posthumanism, Transhumanism and Conflicts of Cyborg Identities

Advances in biotechnology, cybernetics, and AI destabilize traditional definitions of “the human.” Drawing on theorists such as Donna Haraway and speculative narratives like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, this strand examines hybrid identities, cyborg subjectivities, enhancement technologies, and ethical anxieties surrounding the posthuman condition.

7. Human Intelligence and Intelligent Machines: Narratives and Questions of AI

Artificial Intelligence challenges conventional ideas of authorship, creativity, and cognition. How do literary and cinematic narratives imagine machine consciousness? How does AI-generated text complicate the human claim to imagination? This theme also welcomes reflections on algorithmic bias, automation, surveillance, and epistemic authority in the digital age.

8. Scientific and Literary Pedagogy: Differences, Similarities, Possibilities and Challenges

This strand encourages interdisciplinary dialogue on curriculum, methodology, and assessment. Are scientific and literary pedagogies fundamentally different in their approaches to evidence, interpretation, and evaluation? Can integrative models foster epistemic humility and intellectual collaboration? How might the divide identified in The Two Cultures be reconfigured in contemporary classrooms?

9. Epistemology: Evidence, Imagination and the Question of Truth

This strand may revisit foundational debates on what constitutes knowledge. How do empirical verification and imaginative construction differ—or converge? From classical suspicion of poetry to modern scientific positivism, this theme re-examines rival and complementary claims to truth. It may also revisit debates framed in The Two Cultures.

10. Metaphor, Model and Narrative in Scientific Discourse

Scientific theories often rely on metaphor—genetic “codes,” cosmic “fabric,” evolutionary “trees.” This theme explores how figurative language shapes scientific thought and how literary analysis can illuminate scientific rhetoric. Are scientific models themselves narrative constructs?

11. Technology, Power and Biopolitics

Scientific advancement is never ideologically neutral. This strand invites engagement with surveillance technologies, data capitalism, genetic governance, and the politics of technological control. Literature frequently exposes the ethical consequences of scientific power, as seen in dystopian traditions such as 1984.

12. Science, Empire and Colonial Modernity

Modern science developed alongside colonial expansion. How did scientific taxonomy, cartography, and anthropology participate in imperial knowledge systems? How do postcolonial literatures critique or reconfigure Western scientific authority?

13. Gender, Science and the Politics of Knowledge

How have women and marginalized communities been excluded from or misrepresented within scientific institutions? How does literature interrogate masculinist narratives of rationality and technological mastery? This theme may intersect with feminist science studies and speculative feminist fiction.

14. The Aesthetics of Data: Visualization, Digital Texts and Algorithmic Narratives

Data visualization, simulations, and AI-generated texts reshape storytelling. Are algorithms new narrators? Does digital culture blur the boundary between computational logic and creative expression? This theme connects naturally with digital humanities and machine creativity.

15. Neuroscience, Consciousness and the Narrative Self

Contemporary neuroscience challenges traditional ideas of free will, memory, and identity. How do literary texts respond to scientific understandings of cognition? Is the self a narrative construct or a neurological phenomenon?

16. Catastrophe, Risk and Apocalyptic Imaginaries

Nuclear anxiety, pandemics, ecological collapse, and technological singularity produce new narrative forms. How does literature interpret scientific projections of risk? Does catastrophe writing stimulate public awareness or generate fatalism?

17. Popular Science Writing as Literary Form

Writers such as Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan demonstrate how scientific explanation can achieve literary elegance. This theme may explore the narrative strategies of science communication.

18. Ethics of Innovation: Responsibility, Regulation and Imagination

How can literature contribute to ethical foresight in emerging technologies such as genetic editing, AI autonomy, or space colonization? Can fictional narratives function as moral laboratories for scientific futures?