Symposium
"Writing a Cosmos: European Literature and Popular Astronomy, 1890-1950"
We’d love to see you among us at the symposium ‘Writing a Cosmos: European Literature and Popular Astronomy, 1890-1950’ at KU Leuven on February 6. Open to everybody interested in the relationship between literature and astronomy during the modernist period (1890-1950), the symposium will address the vast literary response to astronomical developments with the rise of the ‘new astronomy’ and gauge the role literature played in mediating astronomical knowledge and exploring new ways of imagining the cosmos. We aim to map fiction that incorporates astronomical knowledge and to arrive at a better understanding of the convergences between physical, cultural, and literary practices. The symposium homes in on writings from different registers—highbrow, avant-garde, middlebrow and more popular forms of literature—as well as on writings from various European cultures and languages by bringing together scholars of all career stages and from the UK, Germany, Serbia, Italy, France, and Belgium, in order to determine how European literature of the modernist period reflects on astronomy as a stimulus and transformative force in fiction.
- Keynote 1: Florian Klaeger (U of Bayreuth): How to Read Writings of the Cosmos: Theoretical Reflections on Cosmology and Literature (9:30-10:30, HIW Kardinaal Mercierzaal)
- Keynote 2: Rachel Crossland (U of Chichester): '[E]ssentially a Popular Science': Astronomy in Early Twentieth-Century British Periodicals (16:45-17:45, HIW Kardinaal Mercierzaal)
‘Writing a Cosmos’ is part of the larger research project Literary Knowledge, 1890-1950: Modernisms and the Sciences in Europe based in the research lab MDRN at the University of Leuven in Belgium.
For more information and a detailed programme of the event, visit our website.