Narrating Science:
The Power of Stories in the 21st Century
May 24 – 27, 2017, Toronto
Real Fiction Meets Real Science
Literature lovers and science nerds unite! Join novelists Karen Joy Fowler and Allegra Goodman for an evening of literary readings and conversation about scientific ethics and politics, chimpanzee cognition, lab rats, cancer research...and literature.
What happens when award-winning novelists known for lyrical prose, subtly nuanced characters, careful social observation, wit, and irony start delving into the world of research science? Allegra Goodman and Karen Joy Fowler are among a growing cadre of novelists who have been doing just that in recent years.
In Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, the grown daughter of an experimental psychologist tries to come to terms with the animal-human behavior experiments her father had conducted with her and her lost twin sister as subjects. The novel, Fowler’s sixth, won the PEN/Faulkner Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a New York Times Notable Book choice. Other recent books include the novels Wit’s End and the bestseller, The Jane Austen Book Club, and the story collection, What I Didn't See.
In Allegra Goodman’s Intuition, a varied cast of characters—from a business-minded oncologist to a scrupulous institute director and jealousy-plagued postdoctoral researchers--search for a viral cure to cancer amid the messy data, ambitions, personal rivalries, and funding crises at a prestigious cancer research institute. Goodman’s other recent books include The Chalk Artist and The Cookbook Collector.
In the latter decades of the twentieth century, discourses on science and technology began to spread beyond the professional communities of scientific experts involved in knowledge production. In the cultural realm, we saw the rise of the “popular science” genre, of science series and documentaries on TV, and, around the turn of the millennium, an increase in the amount, depth, and quality of attention paid to science in literary and mainstream fiction. How do these stories about science contribute to understandings of scientific processes and issues of societal concern such as climate change, genetic engineering, nuclear physics, evolution, concepts of cognition, pharmaceutics, and nuclear power?
The Narrating Science conference brings together scholars, writers, and scientists to examine how storytelling about science across a spectrum of genres and media--fiction and non-fiction, print and film--is engaging scientific concepts and facts, practice and practitioners, institutions and societal impacts.
Full conference program listing
CONFERENCE REGISTRATION:
Registration is closed. Registrants will recieve a full conference package(PDF) that includes the conference program summary, hotel and transportation information.
ACCOMMODATION:
TRANSPORTATION OPTIONS:
Union Pearson Express Train - Using the Union Pearson express train (www.upexpress.com/) and subway is approximately $12 Canadian dollars each way. Travel time is about 50-65 minutes to get to and from the Toronto Marriott Bloor Yorkville conference hotel from/to Pearson airport. Directions from airport: go to Pearson station in Terminal 1, directly adjacent to the Link Train service linking Terminals 1 and 3. Trains leave every 15 minutes and take 25 minutes to Union Station. From Union Station take subway Line 1 (Yonge-University) 6 stops to Bloor-Yonge TTC Station (10 min). Exit subway to the underground mall. There is a small entrance door to the Toronto Marriott Bloor Yorkville Hotel directly across from the Shoppers Drug Mart.
Taxi - If you are pressed for time, a taxi from Pearson airport to the Toronto Marriott Bloor Yorkville takes about 30 minutes, and costs about $60 Canadian dollars. Taxis are available outside the terminal exits.
More information regarding transportation from the airport directly to the Marriott hotel: http://www.marriott.com/hotels/maps/travel/yyzmc-toronto-marriott-bloor-yorkville-hotel/
Parking at hotel - Self-parking at the Hudson Bay Centre that joins the Toronto Marriott Bloor Yorkville Hotel: https://www.mybrookfield.ca/hbc-parking/
LOCAL INFORMATION:
Restaurants in the neighbourhood: http://www.marriott.com/hotels/hotel-information/restaurant/yyzmc-toronto-marriott-bloor-yorkville-hotel/
CONTACTS:
Conference Program – Susan Gaines – smgaines@uni-bremen.de
Conference Program – Donald Bruce – don.bruce@uoguelph.ca
Conference Registration and Travel – Vicki Isotamm – visotamm@uoguelph.ca
Organized by the College of Arts, University of Guelph, Canada, and “Fiction Meets Science” at the Universities of Bremen and Oldenburg, Germany and supported by Volkswagen Stifung.
