Graduate Student Conference: "Science and Method in the Humanities"

Program

9:15 a.m. Opening remarks: Alastair Bellany (Rutgers University)

9:30 a.m. Opening Keynote: Barbara Herrnstein Smith (Duke University), “Terms of Engagement: The Humanities vis-à-vis the  Sciences”, Introduced by Evie Shockley (Rutgers University)

11:15 a.m. Morning Panels - Rutgers Student Center (RSC, across College Avenue)

“Origins of Scientific Method” - moderated by Julie Livingston (Rutgers University), RSC 402
Arianne Margolin (University of Colorado at Boulder/Université de Provence), “Observare or Experiri ?    Observation as a Literary Device in Galileo’s Starry Messenger and Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Systems”
Erin Kelly (Rutgers University), “Baconian Method: Causation in the Natural and Social Worlds”
Colin Webster (Columbia University), “On the Ontology of Diagrams in Ancient Greek Natural Inquiry”

“Bodies of Knowledge” - moderated by Ann Jurecic (Rutgers University), RSC 407
Jasmine Lellock (University of Maryland), “Alchemical Poetics in The Purple Island”
Carin Berkowitz (Cornell University, Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry), “Defining Science: Controversy and Method in an Early Ninteenth-Century Priority Dispute in Anatomy”
Monica Barra (CUNY) and Eric Sarmiento (Rutgers University), “Framing the Body: Method, Posthumanism, and the Force of Becoming”

2:00 p.m. Afternoon Panels - Rutgers Student Center (RSC, across College Avenue)

“Authors and their Methods” - moderated by Ann Fabian (Rutgers University), RSC 402
Henry M. Cowles (Princeton University), ““The Very Age of Methods”: Charles Sanders Peirce, Community, and the Ends of Inquiry”
Matthew Sherrill (Rutgers University), “The Primitive’s Words: Herbert Spencer, Literature, and the Limits of Positivism”
Christopher R. Donohue (University of Maryland), “The Weirdest Guest -- William Z. Ripley: Economist, Financial Historian, and Racial Theorist”

“Minds and Methodology” - moderated by Jonathan Kramnick (Rutgers University), RSC 407
Elizabeth Oldfather (Rutgers University), “Literature Amid the Propositionalists”
Leif Fredrickson (University of Virginia), “Neurohistory: Some Theories and Methods for Getting Inside the Grey Box”
Kyle McAuley, (Rutgers University), “Neuropsychology, Evolutionary Theory, and Method in Biological Literary Criticism”

3:30 p.m. Closing Keynote: Peter Dear (Cornell University), “Science, Method, and Method-Talk”, Introduced by James Delbourgo (Rutgers University)

5:00 p.m. Roundtable Discussion