DECODINGS
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts Newsletter
Summer 2016, Vol. 25, No.2
*Upcoming Conferences: SLSA 2016 with HSS & PSA, Atlanta
*Travel Awards, Essay Prizes, Book Prize
*Lifetime Achievement Award
*Election Results for 2nd VP and Member-at-large
*SLSA Website: Contributions welcome
*SLSA Bibliographer Needed
*AnthropoScene: SLSA Book Series
*European Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts announcements
SLSA 2016 will be held in Atlanta, November 3-6, 2016; it will be a joint meeting with the History of Science Society (HSS) and the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) and will take place at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in downtown Atlanta. Conference schedules will be aligned to permit conference goers to attend most activities in the three meetings. The site organizer is Carol Colatrella (Georgia Tech) and the program organizer is Laura Otis (Emory University). Kiki Benzon (USC), with the assistance of Dennis Summers, will coordinate the development of art exhibits and panels.
Conference information, including an overview schedule, links to hotel reservations and conference registration, and details about parking and local transportation are posted at http://litsciarts.org/slsa16 Plenary speakers will be Margaret Edson (author of Wit) and Darryl Cunningham (author of Psychiatric Tales and Science Tales).
The program committee, led by Laura Otis and including John Johnston and Elizabeth Wilson, has responded to all those who submitted proposals for papers, panels, roundtables, and posters. A tentative program with information about approximately 500 sessions will be posted at the conference website in mid-July: http://litsciarts.org/slsa16
You must be a current (2016) member of SLSA to present at the Atlanta SLSA conference. If you are renewing and don’t know your SLSA Membership number, you can find it on the mailing labels for Configurations, or by going to http://slsa.press.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/member_number_lookup.cgi
2016 SLSA TRAVEL AWARDS AND PRIZES http://litsciarts.org/awards/
SLSA Travel Awards: Members of SLSA who present at the annual conference may apply for travel subventions to the 2016 meeting. An applicant should email name, title of SLSA presentation, an indication of how long one has been a member of SLSA, and any information about funding for the conference to the Executive Director at carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu by August 1, 2016. Please provide estimated travel expenses and the amount of support (if any) anticipated from other sources. If you have received travel support from SLSA in the past, please include information about that support (when and how much). SLSA officers will review applications and approve funds for as many as our budget permits; preference will be given to students and those most in need. Each person awarded funds will be presented with a check for $200 at the conference business meeting. Notifications of funding will be sent in early September.
Applications for SLSA NSF Travel Awards will also be due August 1, 2016. Members who are students, artists, independent scholars, or recent Ph.Ds. may apply. The URL for the 2016 application form is posted on the SLSA website at http://litsciarts.org/awards/. You may need to save this file and open it in Adobe Reader because of the form fields in the document. Each applicant will be notified in early September 2016 about decisions.
NOTE about travel awards: Eligible members must separately apply for SLSA and SLSA NSF Travel awards, which cover different expenses.
The Bruns Graduate Essay Prize, established in honor of Edward F. Bruns, is awarded annually to the best essay written by a graduate student member of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. Graduate students wishing to have their essays considered for the $500 prize should submit them by August 1 to N. Katherine Hayles, Department of English, Duke University, via electronic mail to katherine.hayles@duke.edu. Please send a copy of your formatted essay as a PDF or Word file, or send a pointer to a URL where the essay is posted.
The Schachterle Essay Prize: Lance Schachterle, founding president of the society, established an annual prize of $250 in honor of his parents to recognize the best new essay on literature and science written in English by a non-tenured scholar. Eligible authors wishing to submit essays (published or accepted for publication) should send them prior to August 1 to SLSA’s Executive Director, Carol Colatrella, LMC, Georgia Institute of Technology via electronic mail to carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu. Please send a copy of your formatted essay as a PDF or Word file, or send a pointer to a URL where the essay is posted.
The 2016 Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Prize will be awarded to the best academic book on literature, science, and the arts published by an SLSA member. Prizes for books published in 2014 and in 2015 will be announced at the 2016 SLSA conference. Established in fall 2006 in memory of Michelle Kendrick of Washington State University-Vancouver, an energetic, well-loved scholar of literature and science and long-time member of SLSA, the Kendrick Prize is open to any book of original scholarship on literature, science, and the arts published between January 1 and December 31 of the prior year. The winner will receive $250.00. To be considered for the 2016 Kendrick Prize, books published in 2015 must have been mailed by June 1, 2016, to: Professor Robert Markley, Department of English, 608 South Wright Street, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801. Donations for the Kendrick Prize (checks made out to SLSA) can be sent to: Carol Colatrella, SLSA Executive Director, LMC, Georgia Tech, 686 Cherry Street, Atlanta, GA 30332-0165
NOTE: Prizes described above are presented during the Business Meeting of the annual fall conference. One may submit only one entry to one of the two essay prize competitions.
SLSA Lifetime Achievement Award: The SLSA Executive Committee appoints a committee to seek and review nominations for the SLSA Lifetime Achievement award. The Lifetime Achievement Award Committee will send out an announcement asking members to nominate candidates whose significant, interdisciplinary scholarship is exemplary of SLSA. The committee members will nominate candidates and should collaborate on reviewing nominations from the membership to select a recipient of the award or to decide not to make an award for that year. The Lifetime Achievement award will be presented at the business meeting of the annual meeting. Send nominations for the Lifetime Achievement to members Suzanne Black (suzanne.black@oneonta.edu) and Richard Nash (nash@indiana.edu) by August 1.
ELECTION RESULTS: The incoming Second Vice President of SLSA will be David Cecchetto, Associate Professor, Department of Humanities, York University. His term will run from fall 2016 to fall 2018 and will be succeeded by terms as First Vice President and then President. Rebecca Perry was re-elected to a two-year term as member-at-large. Thanks to Ronald Schleifer and Charissa Terranova for being candidates.
CONTRIBUTE TO THE SLSA WEBSITE: New publication announcements, course syllabi and other material for display on the website are welcome. Please see the site for details, or contact Wayne Miller, SLSA Electronic Resources Coordinator, at wayne.miller@law.duke.edu with any questions or comments.
NEW SLSA BIBLIOGRAPHER NEEDED: Bibliographer Jennifer Rhee is recruiting a successor to serve as Bibliographer. Contact her at jsrhee@vcu.edu for more information.
ANTHROPOSCENE: NEW SLSA BOOK SERIES FROM PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
AnthropoScene is a new book series from the Pennsylvania State University Press, published in collaboration with SLSA. While not all scientists have accepted the term “anthropocene” as part of the geological timescale, the idea that humans are changing the planet and its environments in radical and irreversible ways has provoked new kinds of cross-disciplinary thinking about relationships among the arts, human technologies, and nature. This is the broad, cross-disciplinary basis for books published in AnthropoScene. Books in this series will include specialized studies for scholars in a variety of disciplines as well as widely accessible works of interest to broad audiences. They will examine, in a variety of ways, relationships and points of intersection among natural, biological, and applied sciences and literary, visual, and performing arts. The AnthropoScene series represents the depth and breadth of work being done by scholars in literature, science, and the arts, putting innovative juxtapositions within reach of specialists and non-specialists alike.
Series Editors are Lucinda Cole, University of Illinois, and Robert Markley, University of Illinois. Series Advisory Board members are Stacy Alaimo, University of Texas at Arlington; Ron Broglio, Arizona State University; Carol Colatrella, Georgia Institute of Technology; Heidi Hutner, Stony Brook University; Stephanie LeMenager, University of Oregon; Christopher Morris, University of Texas at Arlington; Laura Otis, Emory University; Will Potter, Washington, D.C.; Ronald Schleifer, University of Oklahoma; Susan Squier, Penn State University; Rajani Sudan, Southern Methodist University; and Kari Weil, Wesleyan University
Submissions to the AnthropoScene series should include a three- to five-page proposal outlining the intent of the project, its scope, its relation to other work on the topic, and its intended audience(s). Please also include two to three sample chapters, if available, and your CV. Questions or submissions? Contact Penn State Press: Kendra Boileau, Editor-in-Chief, at kboileau@psu.edu or (814) 867-2220. Or email the series editors: Lucinda Cole at lcole323@gmail.com and Robert Markley at rmarkley49@gmail.com
SLSAeu CONFERENCE 2017: EMPATHIES: The next annual meeting of the SLSAeu will take place in Basel (Switzerland), from 20/21-24 June, 2017. The topic is EMPATHIES, with four major subthemes: Empathy and Morality/Ethics; Empathy and the Nonhuman; Empathy and the Imagination; Collective Empathy; transversal topics: intercultural, historical, aesthetic and legal dimension as well as aspects of gender/sexuality/race/disability/religion. Confirmed speakers so far: Jesse Prinz and Jean Decety. CfP coming soon. Contact: Manuela Rossini at slsa-eu@unibas.ch
SLSAeu MEMBERSHIP: As of next year, there will be different conference fees paid by members and non-members. Please consider joining the European society this year or support us with a donation. Members benefit from networking possibilities, gaining cutting-edge knowledge, inter- and transdisciplinary exchange, visibility via the members directory (forthcoming), 50% discount on books from the Brill series Experimental Practices, Critical Posthumanisms, Critical Animal Studies. Contact: Manuela Rossini at slsa-eu@unibas.ch
SLSAeu AMBASSADORS: The SLSAeu is looking for Ambassadors from a number of European countries, see Governance page of the website to see which countries are already represented. Please consider becoming a member in 2015 in support of the society. Any donations are most welcome. Contact for general information: Dr. Manuela Rossini, SLSA Europe, c/o Department of English, University of Basel, Nadelberg 6, CH-4051 Basel, Switzerland, email: slsa-eu@unibas.ch
SLSA DUES INCREASE: Beginning in 2016, SLSA will charge regular faculty members $55 per year, students will be charged $29, and those with an income and/or pension under $20,000 will be charged $33.
JOIN/RENEW MEMBERSHIP IN SLSA
To receive publications of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA), including Configurations and Decodings, and to participate in the society’s next annual conference, SLSA 2016, join/renew membership, see http://press.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/associations/sls_membership.cgi, or call Johns Hopkins University Press Journals at 800 548 1784 (US & Canada only, all others call 410 516 6987). Mon-Fri 8-am-5pm FAX 410 516 6968. Email: jrnlcirc@press.jhu.edu
NEW MEMBERSHIP CATEGORY: LIFETIME MEMBER
Beginning in 2013, the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts established an additional category of membership for individuals. You can become a Lifetime Member for $1,500. The site for membership renewals/subscriptions is https://associations.press.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/slsa/slsa_membership.cgi
DIRECTIONS FOR SUBSCRIBING TO LIT-SCI LISTSERV
To subscribe, send a plain-text email message to sympa@duke.edu with the following in the body of the message: subscribe LITSCI-L
The list archive and additional subscription information, including how to receive the digest format, are available at: http://litsciarts.org
————————————————————————————————————————-
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts Executive Board (2015-2016)
President: Robert Markley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Executive Director: Carol Colatrella, Georgia Institute of Technology
First Vice-President: Ron Broglio, Arizona State University
Second Vice-President: Marcel O’Gorman, University of Waterloo
Members-at-Large: Rebecca Perry, University of Virginia (2014-2016); Andrew Pilsch, Arizona State University & Rebekah Sheldon, Indiana University-Bloomington (2015-2017)
Graduate Student Liaisons: Nicole Keller Day, Northeastern University (day.n@husky.neu.edu); Kari Nixon, Southern Methodist University (MNixon@smu.edu); Sara DiCaglio (sdicaglio@psu.edu)
Past Presidents: Laura Otis, Emory University; Richard Nash, Indiana University; Alan Rauch, University of North Carolina-Charlotte; Bruce Clarke, Texas Tech University; Eve Keller, Fordham University; Jay Labinger, California Institute of Technology; T. Hugh Crawford, Georgia Tech; Susan Squier, Penn State; Sidney Perkowitz, Emory University; Stuart Peterfreund, Northeastern University; James J. Bono, SUNY-Buffalo; N. Katherine Hayles, Duke University; Mark Greenberg, Drexel University; Lance Schachterle, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Stephen J. Weininger, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Configurations Editors: Melissa Littlefield, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Rajani Sudan, Southern Methodist University
Configurations Email address: configurations@smu.edu
Configurations Book Review Editor: Jeffrey Karnicky, Department of English, 2505 University Avenue,
Drake University, Des Moines, IA 50311. Email: jeff.karnicky@drake.edu
Publications Committee: Susan Squier, Penn State University; Ronald Schleifer, University of Oklahoma; Pamela Gossin, University of Texas at Dallas
Bibliographer: Jennifer Rhee, Virginia Commonwealth University (jsrhee@vcu.edu)
Electronic Resources Coordinator: Wayne Miller, Duke University (wayne.miller@law.duke.edu)
Arts Liaisons: Dennis Summers (dennis@quantumdanceworks.com); Kiki Benzon (kiki.benzon@uleth.ca)
The Executive Director can be reached by phone at (404) 894-1241 or by e-mail at carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu.
Postal address: Carol Colatrella, Executive Director, SLSA, School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology, 686 Cherry Street, Atlanta, GA 30332-0165
SLSA websites: http://www.litsciarts.org and http://slsa.press.jhu.edu
