ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

Neurologists from the nineteenth century to the present have actively engaged in debates about what it means to be human. For instance, late-Victorian laboratory experiments on the brains of frogs, dogs, pigeons and monkeys suggested that animal and human brains are uncomfortably similar. These findings caused scientists and laymen alike to ponder whether humans are soulless automata. This seminar will explore how literary authors after 1800 have intervened in debates regarding brain function. In so doing, we aim to fill a prominent gap in current scholarship. Although there has been much excellent work on the relationship between literature and science in recent years, there has been very little discussion of the traffic between neurology and literature. Rather than suggesting that neurology influenced literature or vice versa, this seminar will emphasize the complex dialogue between these two disciplines. To that end, we will consider papers examining literature from a neurological perspective, as well as papers performing literary explications of neurological texts.

Friday, March 24

Anne Stiles, University of California, Los Angeles
“Neurology and Literature, 1800-present”
Anton Borst, CUNY Graduate Center
“Phrenology Perverted: Edgar Allan Poe and the Pseudoscientific Sublime”
Randall Knoper, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
“National Spirit, Nervous Energy, and Normalcy”
Halle Marshall, University of Exeter
“Human Morality and Animal Instinct in Grant Allen”

Saturday, March 25

Jennifer Solomon, Trinity University
“The Neurological and Naturalist Subject: Bodies Out of Control”
Hedwig Fraunhofer, Georgia College
“Neurasthenia: The Crisis of Masculinity in Strindberg”
Kristine Swenson, University of Missouri-Rolla
“Nerve Dynamics in Arabella Kenealy’s ‘Whips of Time’”
Liza Zitelli, Fordham University
“‘In the Wild Chaos of her Brain’: The Tropes of Cognition in Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret”

Sunday, March 26

Maria Farland, Fordham University
“Ezra Pound and the Endocrine Brain”
Lawrence Switzky, Harvard University
“The Humans Who: Neurological Drama and the Case Histories of Oliver Sacks”
Stephen Burn, Northern Michigan University
“Cerebral Structure in DeLillo’s Great Jones Street”