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digest 2004-04-07 #001.txt
litsci-l-digest Wednesday, April 7 2004 Volume 01 : Number
064
In this issue:
updates/corrections for the summer 2004 issue of DECODINGS
Fwd: science and art
SLS name change
Re: Fwd: science and art
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2004 21:55:29 +0000
From: "Carol Colatrella"
Subject: updates/corrections for the summer 2004 issue of DECODINGS
For the current issue of Decodings, the SLS newsletter, please visit
http://sls.press.jhu.edu/decodings/ and select Summer 2004.
UPDATES to that summer issue of the newsletter (recently mailed to all
2003
& 2004 members) INCLUDE:
1. Eve Keller has informed me that Karla Holloway will not be the
plenary
speaker at SLS 2004 in Durham, but that Donna Haraway has graciously
stepped
into that role.
See the SLS 2004 website at
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls/2004/
2. Yves Abrioux has corrected the European SLS Paris website URL to
http://www.univ-paris8.fr/colloques/SLS/
3. Please note that the printed summer issue contains a ballot on the
question of changing the society's name to Society for Literature,
Science,
and the Arts. All 2003 AND 2004 SLS members are encouraged to vote.
Statements in favor of and opposing the motion appear in the fall-winter
Decodings, also posted at http://sls.press.jhu.edu/decodings/.
I encourage all SLS members to engage in electronic discussion
concerning
the name change motion on the LITSCI listserv. Directions for
subscribing
are on the Johns Hopkins SLS website (http://sls.press.jhu.edu) and on
the
inside back cover of the printed DECODINGS.
4. Sue Hagedorn noted the omission of the Virginia Tech SLS website in
the
recent newsletter. That site is at http://www.litsci.org
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- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 09:52:46 -0400
From: "Wayne Miller"
Subject: Fwd: science and art
>>> "Douglas Galbi" 04/05/04 09:48AM >>>
I've found art history, in particular, study of the Morgan Bible of
Louis IX and of the Hamzanama of Akbar, to be helpful to better
understand recent work in neuroscience and experimental psychology and
its relation to contemporary communication industry developments. See
"Sense in Communication" at www.galbithink.org
So I favor including the arts in the society's name. Moreover, why not
refer to the society as the society for Science, Literature, Society,
and the Arts? (or, those who prefer, can call it the society for
Society, Literature, Science, and the Arts.) Is it necessary to have an
unambiguous decoding of SLSA?
Douglas Galbi
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 14:48:12 -0400
From: "Elizabeth A. Wilson"
Subject: SLS name change
Dear SLS members,
You will have received the reminder from Carol Colatrella about the
voting ballot for the name change that is in the latest Decodings. As a
Member-at-Large on the SLS executive, I would like to urge you to vote
on this issue, so that we can get a clear measure of the membership's
views.
Some of us on the executive and in the membership are not supporting a
name change. We feel that a name change would alter the strong SLS
identity that has been built up over the years and that a certain
openness and flexibility in the organisation may be lost in the
process. We hope that there will be a lively discussion online of this
issue. To start off that process, I have pasted our reasons for
opposing the name change below (from the Fall 2003 Decodings).
Ballots are due by June 15.
Regards,
Elizabeth Wilson
Arguments opposing changing the name of the Society for Literature and
Science
By Arkady Plotnitsky and Elizabeth Wilson, with input from Jim Bono and
Richard Nash
Recent discussions concerning the name of the Society have produced
lively exchanges and reasonable arguments for a name change, in
particular from SLS to SLSA (Society for Literature, Science, and Art),
although other possibilities were entertained as well. However, there
are potential problems with alternative names; specifically, the risk of
losing the identity and history that the name SLS carries with it. The
present statement summarizes reservations concerning changing the
Society's name, and proposes that we keep the name SLS.
There is, we all agree, a need to target specific groups in our
membership (such as the digital art community, art practitioners, art
theorists etc), to encourage their attendance at meetings and their
ongoing input into the organization's structure. The 2003 meeting was
particularly successful in this regard. We all understand that the
impetus behind the name change proposal is to build on and extend this
success. The proposed name change, however, does not merely add a
category to a list--it departs from an institutional identity that has
been built over time, and in doing so something valuable may be lost.
We can all agree that a major strength of this organization has been its
intellectual flexibility, adapting to changing currents of disciplinary
practices and objects of study. Our active commitment to
interdisciplinary investigation has established our reputation as a home
for a wide variety of research interests and methodologies. We are
distinctive for being open to science studies research that draws on
rhetoric, literary studies, philosophy, cultural studies, theories of
representation, graphic and visual technologies, mathematics, history,
and ethnographies. No other science studies organization can boast such
a rich membership base, such hospitality to a diversity of
methodologies, and such openness to the potential of science studies in
the years ahead.
As a name, "SLS" is associated with all these things. Neither
"literature" nor "science" is, has been, or should be construed narrowly
in the name of this organization. Rather, those words are balancing
gestures toward a comprehensive sweep that includes a great deal more
than any practical list of nuanced particularities can hope to
enumerate. Our name is more than the sum of its constituent parts; we
have fashioned an institutional identity marked by strategies of
openness and inclusion, and the familiar name for that identity is
"SLS."
Accordingly, we recommend that the membership vote to keep the name the
same--that is, to retain the identity of the organization as defined by
its intellectual and academic diversity, not by the letters in its
acronym. In no way should this be construed as opposition to the
inclusion of any of the diverse constituencies that help this
organization to flourish. Retaining the name SLS is less about retaining
a narrow set of initials than it is about retaining the identity that
has been created over the past twenty years. Changing the name is not
just a matter of "buying a vowel"; we would also lose some of the name
identification that has been built up (sometimes at cost) during that
history.
- --
Elizabeth A. Wilson
Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences
The University of Sydney, NSW 2006
Australia
Ph: +61 2 9351 4764
Fax: +61 2 9351 5700
Email: elizabeth.wilson@rihss.usyd.edu.au
Homepage: http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/rihss/ewilson.html
From September, 2003:
Elizabeth A. Wilson
Institute for Advanced Study
School of Social Science
Einstein Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540
Email: eaw@ias.edu
Ph : (609) 734 8365
Fax : (609) 951 4434
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2004 11:53:37 -0500
From: Bruce Clarke
Subject: Re: Fwd: science and art
Douglas: Thanks for your remarks in favor of the name change. I
appreciate
your eliciting the way that the inclusion of the A loosens up the
acronym to
take on wider and multiple interdisciplinary implications. A good SLSA
is
of course a tasty combination of sweet, tart, moist, crunchy, and spicy
ingredients. Bruno
Wayne Miller wrote:
> >>> "Douglas Galbi" 04/05/04 09:48AM >>>
>
> I've found art history, in particular, study of the Morgan Bible of
> Louis IX and of the Hamzanama of Akbar, to be helpful to better
> understand recent work in neuroscience and experimental psychology and
> its relation to contemporary communication industry developments. See
> "Sense in Communication" at www.galbithink.org
>
> So I favor including the arts in the society's name. Moreover, why not
> refer to the society as the society for Science, Literature, Society,
> and the Arts? (or, those who prefer, can call it the society for
> Society, Literature, Science, and the Arts.) Is it necessary to have
an
> unambiguous decoding of SLSA?
>
> Douglas Galbi
>
> -
> +-+-+-+-+-+
> Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
> links and unsubscribing info:
> http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
- --
Bruce Clarke
2nd VP, Society for Literature and Science
Professor, Department of English
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409-3091
bruce.clarke@ttu.edu
vox: 806 742-2500 x274
fax: 806 742-0989
cel: 806 928-9486
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
End of litsci-l-digest V1 #64
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