DECODINGS
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts Newsletter
Summer 2019, Vol. 28, No.3
*SLSA 2019, “Experimental Engagements,” University of California-Irvine
*SLSA 2019 Awards: Travel Awards, Essay Prizes
*2018 SLSA Kendrick Book Prize and Honorable Mentions
*Graduate Student Liaisons Appointed
*2019 Election for Member-at-Large
*New Policies under Consideration: Respectful Behavior and Freedom of Speech
*AnthropoScene Book Series
*SLSA Europe News
UPCOMING MEETING: SLSA 2019: Experimental Engagements — November 7-9, 2019
University of California-Irvine, California
https://litsciarts.org/slsa19/
Co-chairs: Jesse Jackson and Antoinette Lafarge.
Keynote speakers, Andrea Polli, co-sponsored by the UCI Department of Art, and Laura Kurgan, co-sponsored by the UCI Department of Film and Media Studies.
In the past two meetings, SLSA has taken a close look at how we use concepts of time and mind to regulate our relation to the world. For SLSA 2019, we want to turn our attention towards embodied and experimental practices that engage with a world out of balance. We are especially interested in speculative and experimental engagements that take place at the margins of art, science, and literature.
The SLSA 2019 organizers sent out notifications of acceptance for all categories of submissions in late June. If for some reason anyone is unclear about the status of their submission(s), they should email the conference organizers right away at slsaucirvine@gmail.com. The program committee is still in the process of organizing panels from the stand-alone papers, and that information will be confirmed later in the summer. We would like to thank the many peer reviewers who volunteered their time to review some of the over 500 submissions to SLSA 2019. We look forward to seeing everyone in November.
Meeting Location: The 2019 conference will be held over three days (Thursday, November 7th through Saturday, November 9th) on the campus of UC Irvine. Most conference panels and the keynotes will be at the Student Center, with additional events taking place in nearby venues on campus.
Conference Hotel: A limited number of rooms are available at reduced rates at the Atrium Hotel in Irvine. To reserve a room for SLSA 2019, please call 1-800-854-3012 and reference SLSA 2019 CONFERENCE.
SLSA Membership: Participants in the 2019 Conference must be 2019 members of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. For more information about SLSA, visit the organization’s website at www.litsciarts.org
REGISTRATION NOW OPEN: To join/re-join the society and to register for the 2019 meeting, see https://slsa.press.jhu.edu/membership/conference
REGISTRATION FEES are listed below, and are in US currency (late fees apply after September 15, 2019).
These fees include continental breakfasts and lunches on all three days as well as some coffee breaks and reception snacks. Your food preferences will be polled closer to the date of the conference.
Regular faculty: $250 Late faculty (after 9/15/19): $350
Students and adjunct faculty: $175 Late students and adjunct faculty (after 9/15/19): $250
SLSA Travel Awards
SLSA provides a limited number of travel awards for underfunded individuals attending the annual conference. Members of SLSA who present at the annual conference may apply for travel subventions. 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. 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 at the conference business meeting. Some applicants may also be eligible to apply for SLSA NSF Travel Grants (see below).
SLSA NSF Travel Grants
Applicants must be a US Citizen or at a US institution. An applicant must be a grad student, independent scholar/artist, or recent PhD (received in the last 5 years). The grant only covers travel to and from the meeting and registration costs. The grant does not cover travel during the meeting or hotel expenses. Airfare must be booked on US-flag airlines. Each successful applicant must participate in meeting to apply for award and will receive reimbursement after submitting receipts and completing an online form. See detailed directions and link to the reimbursement form at https://www.litsciarts.org/awards/
The Bruns Essay Prize
The Bruns Graduate Essay Prize, 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 nkh4@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.
SLSA Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Prize
SLSA holds an annual competition for the Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Prize awarded each year to the best academic book on literature, science, and the arts published by an SLSA member. The prize will be announced at the annual SLSA conference. Established in the fall of 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 July 1 and June 30 for awarding in the following fall. The winner will receive $250.00.
To be considered for the Kendrick Prize, please send or arrange with your publisher to send three copies of your book by June 30, 2020 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, with Kendrick Prize in memo) can be sent to
Carol Colatrella, SLSA Executive Director, LMC, Georgia Tech, 686 Cherry Street, Atlanta, GA 30332-0165
Note: The awards 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
At the fall 2018 annual meeting, the SLSA Executive Committee appointed a committee to seek and review nominations for the SLSA Lifetime Achievement award. Nominations for the award should be sent by August 1, 2019, to Laura Otis (lotis@emory.edu), Raymond Malewitz (Raymond.Malewitz@oregonstate.edu), and McKenzie Stupiča (mckenziestupica2023@u.northwestern.edu). The Lifetime Achievement Awards Committee will consider nominations for candidates whose significant, interdisciplinary scholarship is exemplary of SLSA. The committee members will review 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 during the annual meeting.
Information about 2019 Travel Awards, Essay and Book Prizes, and the Lifetime Achievement Award appears at https://litsciarts.org/awards/
APPOINTED Graduate Student Liaisons: SLSA welcomes Brad Necyk (University of Alberta), Ben Platt (Oregon State University), and Tyler Gabbard (Purdue University) as graduate student liaisons advising the executive committee; they join McKenzie Stupiča (Northwestern University). Contact them via email at
Brad Necyk: bnecyk@ualberta.ca; Ben Platt (plattbe@oregonstate.edu);Tyler Gabbard: rgabbar@purdue.edu; or McKenzie Stupiča: mckenziestupica2023@u.northwestern.edu
2018 SLSA Kendrick Book Prize
The winner of the 2018 Kendrick Book Award is Arielle Saiber’s Measured Words: Computation and Writing in Renaissance Italy (University of Toronto Press). Two books were short listed and received honorable mentions: Jennifer Lieberman, Power Lines: Electricity in American Life and Letters, 1882-1952 (MIT Press), and David Parisi, Archeologies of Touch: Interfacing with Haptics from Electricity to Computing (University of Minnesota Press). Congratulations to all. And thanks to Bob Markley for chairing the prize deliberations.
2019 Election for Member-at-Large
The Journals Division of Johns Hopkins University Press will send a link to the 2019 ballot to all 2019 members. The person with the most votes will serve as member-at-large for two years (fall 2019 to fall 2020). There are two candidates who have been nominated and who have submitted statements:
As both a media scholar and media artist, I’ve found SLSA to be one of the few academic venues that really values the varied natures of my practices. I’ve come to the conferences on a regular basis since 2007, and consider SLSA to be one of my “must-attend” conferences of the year, not only because of the multifarious intellectual conversations that happen, but also because of the people that I meet that turn into interlocutors and friends. If elected to the member-at-large position I would like to further highlight the work done by artists and scholar-artists, building upon the already excellent exhibition program and artists talks. As a queer transgender woman I’d also want to work to elevate the work of other trans SLSA members, especially queer and trans people of color (QTPOC). I am currently an Assistant Professor of Art + Design at Northeastern University, in Boston, MA, and previously worked in the Cinema and Media Studies program at Wellesley College.
Biography
Her current artistic research explores queer and trans futurities on earth and in the cosmos. Projects include Enredos Sónicos/Sonic Plots, a collaborative sonic exchange between the US and Cuba; they transmitted continuously / but our times rarely aligned / and their signals dissipated in the æther (2018-present), a 20 channel sound art installation with speakers made from handmade abaca paper and piezo electric elements, with sounds collected by custom antennas from satellite transmissions; and PIECES FOR PERFORMER(S) AND EXTRATERRESTRIAL ENTITIES (2017-present), event scores laser etched into handmade translucent abaca paper.
Adam Nocek, Assistant professor in the philosophy of technology and science and technology studies in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University adam.nocek@asu.edu
I am interested in being considered for the position of member at large in the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. I have been presenting papers and chairing panels at the SLSA since my first years in graduate school at the University of Washington; this experience has helped me to build strong networks (of scholars and practitioners) that have been vital to my academic career. It is thanks to enriching and sustained intellectual engagements at the SLSA that I was able to land my first tenure-track position in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University in 2015. Since that time, I co-organized the 2017 SLSA in Tempe, Arizona and continue to present papers, chair panels, and participate on roundtables at annual conferences. In 2018, I became the founding director of the Center for Philosophical Technologies at ASU (which works at the intersection of STS, design, and art methods). If elected, I would leverage this administrative position to help foster new intellectual and institutional partnerships with the SLSA organization.
Biography
He has published widely on the philosophy of media and science; speculative philosophy (especially Whitehead); design philosophy, history, and practice; and critical and speculative theories of computational media. In his creative practice, Nocek draws on social and speculative design and the material arts and sciences to design techniques for activating collective critique and imagination. His work has been performed and exhibited internationally. Nocek is the co-editor of The Lure of Whitehead and has just completed a manuscript titled, Molecular Capture: Biology, Animation, and the Design of Governance. Nocek is currently working on two book projects: the first project addresses computational governance and the emergence of new regimes of design expertise, and the second project reimagines the role of mythology within speculative design philosophy. Nocek is a Visiting Researcher at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Study and is the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) Visiting Professor.
POLICIES UNDER CONSIDERATION, NOW UPDATED: Respectful Behavior and Freedom of Speech
SLSA officers and the executive committee have developed two new policies and have shared them with members through the listserv. After incorporating revisions suggested by several members, the updated policies have been posted here:
Any member interested in volunteering to serve as ombudsperson, should send an email to Carol Colatrella (carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu); include a short statement of why you are interested in serving in this role and what experience you can bring the position. Current officers will review statements to make an appointment.
ANTHROPOSCENE: SLSA BOOK SERIES FROM PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS AnthropoScene is a book series from Penn State University Press, published in collaboration with the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. 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 include specialized studies for scholars in a variety of disciplines as well as widely accessible works of interest to broad audiences. They 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. http://www.psupress.org/books/series/book_SeriesAnthropoScene.html
Submissions 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. Send submissions or questions to: Kendra Boileau, Assistant Director and Editor‐in‐Chief, at kboileau@psu.edu. Or contact the series editors: Lucinda Cole at lcole323@gmail.com and Robert Markley at rmarkley49@gmail.com.
ANTHROPOSCENE (continued)
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.
Announcing a New Title in AnthropoScene: The SLSA Book Series
Love in a Time of Slaughters: Human-Animal Stories Against Genocide and Extinction by Susan McHugh http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08370-4.html
“[A] vital contribution to one of the most urgent conversations of our time.”—Daniel Justice, author of
Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History
In this book, Susan McHugh examines a diverse array of contemporary narratives in which genocide and extinction blur species lines in order to show how such stories can promote the preservation of biological and cultural diversity. These narratives show the vulnerabilities of affective bonds as well as the kinds of loss shared when interspecific relationships are annihilated. In this thoughtful critique, McHugh explores the potential of these narratives to become a powerful, urgent strategy of resistance to the forces that work to dehumanize people, eradicate animals, and threaten biodiversity.
Also in the AnthropoScene series:
Anthropocene Reading: Literary History in Geologic Times. Edited by Tobias Menely and Jesse Oak Taylor http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-07872-4.html
Editing the Soul: Science and Fiction in the Genome Age by Everett Hamner
http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-07933-2.html
SLSA Member’s Only Discount from Penn State University Press: Use code SLSA30 for 30% off any AnthropoScene title purchased directly from PSU Press, plus free domestic shipping and discounts on foreign shipping!
SLSA EUROPE ANNUAL CONFERENCE
ANTHROPOCENES: Reworking of the Wound, to be held on 17-20 June 2020 in Katowice, Poland.
Organizer: Ania Malinowska
Contact: anthropocenes2020@gmail.com
The website URL for the conference will be shared via the SLSA listserv when available.
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts Executive Board (2019)
President: Marcel O’Gorman, University of Waterloo
Executive Director: Carol Colatrella, Georgia Institute of Technology
First Vice-President: David Cecchetto, York University, Toronto
Second Vice-President: Maria Whiteman, Indiana University
Members-at-Large: John Hay, University of Nevada-Las Vegas (2017-2019); Raymond Malewitz (2018-2020)
Graduate Student Liaisons: Brad Necyk, University of Alberta (bnecyk@ualberta.ca); Ben Platt (plattbe@oregonstate.edu);Tyler Gabbard: rgabbar@purdue.edu; McKenzie Stupiča: (mckenziestupica2023@u.northwestern.edu).
Configurations Editors: Melissa Littlefield, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and 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
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts Executive Board (continued)
Electronic Resources Coordinator: Wayne Miller, Duke University (wayne.miller@law.duke.edu)
Bibliographer: Kari Nixon, Whitworth University. Email: knixon@whitworth.edu
Arts Liaisons: Dennis Summers (dennis@quantumdanceworks.com); Kiki Benzon (kiki.benzon@uleth.ca);
Maria Whiteman (mariawhiteman777@yahoo.com)
Social Media Liaison: Nicole Fletcher (grayjaymedia@gmail.com)
Past Presidents: Ron Broglio, Arizona State University; Robert Markley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; 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
The Executive Director can be reached at (404) 894-1241 or 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
