DECODINGS
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts Newsletter
Summer 2022, Vol. 31, No.4 (July 26 edition)
*SLSA 2022: Reading Minds, Purdue University, Conference Update
*Awards: Travel (deadlines August 1), Essay, Book, Lifetime
*Membership Renewal
*2022 Election Results
*Committee Members and Appointments: Social Media
*Policies: Respectful Behavior and Freedom of Speech
*Ombudspersons
*New Books Series: Proximities
*AnthropoScene Book Series
*European Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts
SLSA 2022, Purdue University
Reading Minds: Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, and the Reading Human https://litsciarts.org/slsa2022/
The Center for NeuroHumanities in the School of Languages and Cultures and co-sponsors will host SLSA2022 as an on-site conference (subject to future guidelines relating to COVID-19). For Purdue University’s response to the pandemic, please refer to https://protect.purdue.edu for updates. The program committee at Purdue University is looking forward to the 2022 conference, October 6-9, and to welcoming everyone to the West Lafayette campus!
A draft program has been posted to the conference website. Please note that this is a draft program, and as such, may contain some typos, and small errors with names, etc. The final program is being assembled in EasyChair, which populates the program with the names and titles as entered by conference participants, and which should then be free of errors.
The link for registration is live now on the website: https://litsciarts.org/slsa2022/
Please note that there are three dates, with different registration fees (early, regular and late), with the early registration offering a lower registration fee. The conference registration fee includes:
Registration fees are as follows:
Early registration by 8/15: $275 (faculty) / $180 (graduate students)
Regular registration: $300 (faculty) / $200 (graduate students)
Late registration (3 weeks before conference): $350 (faculty) / $225 (graduate students)
Please note that in order to ensure access to the conference rates for the hotels, please make your reservation by 8/19 (Union Club hotel); and by 9/1 (Holiday Inn). Conference attendees will be able to book accommodation at the newly renovated on-campus Union Club Hotel, where a block of rooms is reserved: https://www.purdueunionclubhotel.com. In addition, there are a number of other options for accommodation, both in West Lafayette and Lafayette. For conference participants arriving by air, the closest airport is IND (Indianapolis). Information about accommodation and travel will be posted to the conference website in the coming weeks.
The School of Languages and Cultures Graduate Student Committee will help facilitate coordination between graduate student conference participants and Purdue hosts. We cannot guarantee an accommodation match, but we will do our very best! If you are a graduate student who is interested in this possibility, please contact: Lorena Piña Palacio lpinapal@purdue.edu.
Participants in SLSA 2022 must be current members of SLSA. For new or continuing membership, please refer to the society’s website: https://www.litsciarts.org
For updates and further information, as it becomes available, please see the conference website: https://litsciarts.org/slsa2022/. Please address enquiries to slsa@purdue.edu.
AWARDS
Conference Travel Funds The society will make available funds donated by members and from its general budget for travel expenses to SLSA conferences for member applicants in need of support to supplement their institutional and personal funds. In addition, the coalition of science societies was recently awarded a National Science Foundation grant to support travel to the conference for members who are US citizens or students enrolled in US institutions. See more details at https://litsciarts.org/awards/ about these two opportunities to receive reimbursement for travel expenses to attend SLSA:
Applicants must be independent scholars, artists, or recent PhDs who are US citizens or who are enrolled in US institutions. Applications from members of historically excluded groups and from those without access to additional funds, for whom conference attendance would be financially difficult without the NSF travel grant will be prioritized
SLSA NSF funds can only be applied to transportation to and from the conference and for conference registration. NSF funds can reimburse any airfare purchased on “flagship” carriers or codeshare via the Airline Open Skies agreement. For example, if one books on Delta but Virgin is the airline used, the receipt should show payment was made to Delta in order for the expense to be reimbursed. (See more details at https://litsciarts.org/awards/)
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 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, has 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 nontenured 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.
Lifetime Achievement: The SLSA Lifetime Achievement Award committee evaluates nominations for candidates whose significant, interdisciplinary scholarship is exemplary of SLSA. If you would like to nominate a scholar whose lifetime of work has made a great contribution to the interdisciplinary study of literature, science, and the arts, please explain in a brief statement (about one double-spaced page, or about 250 words) why you think this candidate would make an ideal recipient of the SLSA Lifetime Achievement Award. Nominations for the 2022 award to were due by May 30, 2022. We look forward to reading your submissions. Nominations from previous years are carried over to future years, so if your candidate has not been selected, she or he will be considered in future years.
MEMBERSHIP RENEWAL: Please remember to renew your membership; 2022 rates are noted here:
https://www.litsciarts.org/join-renew-membership/ Benefits of membership include the newsletter Decodings, the LITSCI listserv, and the journal Configurations, which explores the relations of literature and the arts to the sciences and technology. Founded in 1993, the journal continues to set the stage for transdisciplinary research concerning the interplay between science, technology, and the arts. https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/36
Members can access the Configurations online archive of articles, useful resources for teaching and scholarship at the above link.
SLSA 2022 Election Results
Congratulations to the incoming Second Vice-President, who beginning in fall 2022 will serve consecutive two-year terms as 2nd VP, 1st VP, and President:Adam Nocek, Associate Professor, Philosophy of Technology and Science and Technology Studies, School of Arts, Media + Engineering, Arizona State University. And congratulations to the new Member at Large, who will serve a two-year term (fall 2022-fall 2024),
Amanda K. Greene, Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Research Associate, Lehigh University.
SLSA COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND APPOINTMENTS: SOCIAL MEDIA
Wayne Miller, Electronic Resources Coordinator, asks for new images for the SLSA website homepage (litsciarts.org). Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal has joined Ed Chang in developing SLSA social media, Twitter and Facebook respectively. SLSA members interested in contributing to social media on behalf of the society are encouraged to email Ed (change@ohio.edu ) and Ranjodh (rjdhaliwal@ucdavis.edu).
Policies Adopted: Respectful Behavior and Freedom of Speech & Call for Ombudspersons
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 policies have been approved the executive committee and adopted by the society. The updated policies are posted here:
In accordance with the policies, SLSA is recruiting individuals to serve as ombudspersons who would receive and mediate any issues raised by members/conference attendees. Any member interested in volunteering to serve as ombudsperson, should apply by emailing 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 applications to make appointments.
Role of SLSA Ombudsperson
Each Ombudsperson is an impartial entity who strives to see that SLSA members and SLSA conference attendees are treated fairly and equitably. Any member/attendee can seek the advice of an Ombudsperson. The Ombudsperson is impartial, neutral, and confidential. The rights and interests of all parties to disputes are considered, with the goal of achieving fair outcomes. The primary responsibilities of the Ombudsperson are:
Ombudspersons: Marcel O’Gorman (marcel@uwaterloo.ca) and Kari Nixon (knixon@whitworth.edu)
NEW SLSA BOOK SERIES Proximities, from University of Minnesota Press!
Adjacencies abound. We are past the moment of merely thinking in terms of how opposites attract and nodes network. Today, disciplines and fields move consciously proximate to one another, in conversation and growing together. Further, the future is no longer sometime in the distance, but appears near to us, often grasped as an impending horizon of political, social, economic, and environmental catastrophe. Now more than ever, so much is so close. See the Call for Proposals (https://litsciarts.org/proximitiesflyer.pdf) for more information.
Books in the Proximities series think proximately, that is, in disciplinary tandem, about the relationships within and between the arts, literature, and science, as well as how scholarship can best be in active dialogue with communities and the world around us today, and in the future. Published in association with the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, this series not only thinks across disciplines, but thinks about the continuities and crossings themselves, interrogating how and why their disciplinary proximities matter. Proximities publishes work that is crafted with nearness in mind: human nearness to one another and the world around us; nearness to one another’s thoughts; to our written and unwritten pasts; to critical trends and crises; to our futures ahead. This kind of scholarship powerfully catalyzes awareness of what it means to work interdisciplinarily by challenging assumptions about disciplinary thinking from the outside in, and the inside out. If interested in submitting a proposal, please contact the editors with a short description of your book project. Series Editors: David Cecchetto—York University (Toronto, Canada) dcecchet@yorku.ca Arielle Saiber—Bowdoin College (Maine, USA) asaiber@bowdoin.edu
ANTHROPOSCENE: PAST 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 the series.
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. Send questions to: Kendra Boileau, Assistant Director and Editor‐in‐Chief, at kboileau@psu.edu. Or contact the SLSA liaison for the series, Pamela Gossin at psgossin@utdallas.edu or psgossin@gmail.com.
AnthropoScene: The SLSA Book Series https://www.psupress.org/emailassets/NR_SLSA_1021.html
Electromagnetism and the Metonymic Imagination by Kieran Murphy
Love in a Time of Slaughters: Human-Animal Stories Against Genocide and Extinction by Susan McHugh
Anthropocene Reading: Literary History in Geologic Times. Edited by Tobias Menely and Jesse Oak Taylor
Editing the Soul: Science and Fiction in the Genome Age by Everett Hamner
The Art of Identification. Eds. Rex Ferguson, Melissa M. Littlefield, and James Purdon
Fear and Nature: Ecohorror Stories from the Anthropcene. Eds. Christy Tidwell and Carter Soles
Fragments from the History of Loss by Louise Green
Oil Fictions. Eds. Stacey Balkan and Swaralipi Nandi.
Under the Literary Microscope. Eds. Sina Farzin, Susan M. Gaines, and Roslynn D. Haynes.
SLSA Member Discount from Penn State University Press: Use promo code NR21 for 30% off AnthropoScene titles purchased directly, plus free domestic shipping and discounts on foreign shipping!
EUROPEAN Society for Literature, Science, and the Art is the sister organization of the international, USA-based Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. SLSAeu welcomes colleagues in the humanities, the social sciences, the arts, and all fields of science, medicine, engineering, and computer sciences as well as independent scholars, artists and scientists. https://www.slsa-eu.org/
SLSA EXECUTIVE BOARD (2022)
President: David Cecchetto, York University, Toronta (dcecchet@yorku.ca)
Executive Director: Carol Colatrella, Georgia Institute of Technology (carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu)
First Vice-President: Maria Whiteman, Indiana University (mtw1@iu.edu)
Second Vice-President: Rajani Sudan, Southern Methodist University (rsudan@mail.smu.edu)
Members-at-Large: Elizabeth Donaldson (2020-22); Adam Nocek (2019-21); Joshua DiCaglio (2021-23);
Anne Hudson Jones (2021-23)
Graduate Student Liaisons: Ben Platt (plattbe@oregonstate.edu), Another position open
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: Pamela Gossin; Raymond Malewitz; Bruce Clarke
Electronic Resources Coordinator: Wayne Miller (wayne.miller@gmail.com)
Arts Liaisons: Dennis Summers (dennis@quantumdanceworks.com); Maria Whiteman (mtw1@iu.edu)
Social Media Liaisons: Ed Chang (change@ohio.edu); Adriana Knouf (a.knouf@northeastern.edu); Ranjodh
Singh Dhaliwal (rdhaliwa@nd.edu)
Ombudspersons: Marcel O’Gorman (marcel@uwaterloo.ca) and Kari Nixon (knixon@whitworth.edu)
Past Presidents: Marcel O’Gorman, University of Waterloo; 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
