Shows
LitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastClusters, Cybernetics & CommunicationProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.
About the episode:
This sixth episode of the third series of LitSciPod features an interview with Dr Heather Love, Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Waterloo (Canada). Heather discusses her work on cybernetics in the works of Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos, and Virginia Woolf, as well as modernism and diagnosis. She introduces us to her new project on obstetrics and explores her unique relationship with the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). Together, we consider the importance of...
2021-09-301h 02LitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 5: Nature in Crisis; Creativity as CureProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.
About the episode:
This fifth episode of the third series of LitSciPod features an interview with Dr John Holmes, Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture at the University of Birmingham. John discusses how poetry helps us to negotiate the legacies of Darwin’s discoveries and the Pre-Raphaelites’ shaping of the culture of Victorian science (and vice versa). He introduces us to the Synopsis Network, which explores art in natural history museums, to the Ruskin Land project in the Wyre Forest, and to his more...
2021-08-301h 11LitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 4 - Narratives and Mental Time-TravelProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.
About the episode:
This fourth episode of the third series of LitSciPod features an interview with Professor Simon John James (@ProfSJJames) of Durham University. A well-established literary critic of the nineteenth-century novel, Simon discusses his long-standing interests in the relationship between literature and science: its historical origins and H. G. Wells’s role, all the way up to what scientists and literary critics can offer each other today. Given Simon’s role in the Durham Commission on Creativity in Education, we also discuss the...
2021-07-1259 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 3 - An Educational BindProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.
About the episode:
This third episode of the third series of LitSciPod features an interview with education researcher and recent DPhil graduate Dr Ashmita Randhawa (@Rand_Ash). Through a discussion of Ashmita’s thesis on studio schools, we consider educational policy, STEM and the language of aspiration, and the long history of STEM shortages. At the end of the episode, you can hear Ashmita read Sarah Key’s poem ‘Be’. You can watch Sarah Kay reading it here https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_ka...
2021-05-261h 04LitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 2 - Engines of IngenuityProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.
About the episode:
This second episode of the third series of LitSciPod features an interview with modern linguist, early modernist and Francophile Dr Jennifer Oliver (@jenhelenoliver) discussing shipwrecks and technological developments.
Materials discussed:
Gordon Lightfoot, “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuzTkGyxkYI)
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Wreck of the Deutschland” (1875–6,1918)
About the Edmund Fitzgerald: https://www.shipwreckmuseum.com/edmund-fitzgerald/the-fateful-journey/
Maritime Museum of the Great Lakes: https://www.marmuseum.ca/
Josephine Mandamin’s Water Walker movement: https://www.cbc.ca/news...
2021-04-131h 12LitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 1 - Science Alone Can't Save UsProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.
About the episode:
This first episode of the new, third series of LitSciPod sees the co-hosts reflecting on what the pandemic has taught us about the indivisible connection between the humanities and the sciences. We cover vaccine communications and vaccine hesitancy, Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro’s reflections on scientific truth, and books which have got us thinking.
Materials discussed:
Sally Frampton, ‘Vaccine scepticism is as old as vaccines themselves. Here's how to tackle it’ The Guardian (23 Feb 2021): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/23/vaccin...
2021-03-0834 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 6 - Mind your Matter: Science and Victorian PoetryProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.
About the episode:
The sixth episode of the second series of LitSciPod is all about analogy and language shared between literature (especially poetry), science, and science writing.
Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Greg Tate (@drgregorytate), Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of St Andrews. Greg shares his research on matter, form, and rhythm in nineteenth century poetry and the physical sciences. He asks why there is so much poetry in the science writing of the period (and...
2020-09-0453 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 5 - Thinking Historically: Public Health and the MilitaryProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.
Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Robert C. Engen (@RobertEngen), Assistant Professor in the Department of Defence Studies at the Canadian Forces College. Robert discusses his interdisciplinary research on parallels between the military responses to the 1918 pandemic and the current COVID-19 pandemic, public health and global conflict, a project commemorating the Battle of Hill 70, as well as more recent work on the human dimension of AI in warfare. At the end of the episode, you can hear Robert read...
2020-07-3154 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 4 - Touching ContagionProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric). Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.
Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Kari Nixon (@HalfSickShadows). At the end of the episode, you can hear Kari read the poem ‘Inskripsjoner/Inscriptions’ bilingually in Norweigian and English by Tarjei Vesaas, trans. by Kenneth G. Chapman.
Episode resources:
Introduction:
Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (1854)
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
Catherine Charlwood, ‘“Habitually Embodied” Memories: The Materiality and Physicality of Music in Hardy's Poetry’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review (2020) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409819000338
Sile O’Modhrain and R. Brent Gillespie (2018) ‘Once More, with...
2020-05-261h 082020-05-2101 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 3 - Outbreak: A Two Cultures Pinch-PointProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric). Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.
Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Emilie Taylor-Pirie (@DrETaylorPirie, née Taylor-Brown), an Early Career Academic specialising in the intersections between literature, science and culture. Millie discusses nineteenth-century responses to malaria and how scientists couched their work in imaginative language; how studying a joint honours in English Literature and Biology set her up for an interdisciplinary career; the importance of being prepared for a zombie apocalypse; and much more! At the end of the episode, you c...
2020-04-0554 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 3 TeaserComing soon... Outbreak: A Two Cultures Pinch-Point, feat. Dr Emilie Taylor-Brown
2020-03-2601 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 2 - The Work of KnowingProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric). Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.
Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Olivia Smith (@OliveFSmith), a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow based at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. Olivia discusses her work on early modern life writing and biology, exploring the importance of cognition and recognition to the pre-history of scientific research. In a wide-ranging discussion, she covers archives, letters, objects philosophical and scientific, and the relationship of the early modern imagination to interdisciplinarity. Olivia also talks about her work with the charity Arts Emergency (@artsemergency...
2020-03-0654 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 1 - Science Isn’t SeparateProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.
Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Professor Sharon Ruston (@SharonRuston), Chair in Romanticism at Lancaster University’s Department of English and Creative Writing. Sharon is the author of Creating Romanticism (2013) and Shelley and Vitality (2005) and co-editor of the forthcoming Collected Letters of Sir Humphrey Davy. Sharon talks about her LitSci research on Mary Shelley, describes her MOOC on the nineteenth-century chemist Sir Humphrey Davy, and introduces her current project, crowdsourcing transcriptions for Davy’s notebooks. At the end of the episode, you can...
2020-02-0551 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastLitSciPod - Series 2 TrailerLitSciPod is coming back for Series 2.
2020-01-2501 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastMinisode: Extinctions & Rebellions BSLS SymposiumProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones
Laura and Catherine discuss the recent BSLS Winter Symposium on the theme of Extinctions and Rebellions, held at the University of Liverpool. If you weren’t able to make the event, we talk through the panels we attended (and between us we went to all of them!), the impact roundtable and our key takeaways from the day.
Episode resources (in order of appearance):
Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard UP, 2011)
2019-11-2426 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastMinisode: An Overdue B/III/iiiProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones
Laura and Catherine are (re)joined by a special guest: Dr Rachel Crossland, Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature at the University of Chichester. Rachel takes the B/III/iii challenge while discussing how to talk about discoveries in physics past and present; the difficulties of being asked to know what you don’t yet know; and the relationship betwen the popular press and scientific ideas.
Episode resources (in order of appearance):
Gillian Beer, Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)
'Problems of...
2019-10-2521 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 6 - Inci-dental Humanities Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones
Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Peter Fifield, Lecturer in Modern Literature at Birkbeck, University of London. Peter relates how his interest in bodies and their ailments grew out of his work on Samuel Beckett, discussing where his research and teaching intersects with #litsci and the medical humanities. Peter also debates whether Dorothy Richardson has written “the great dentistry novel” and introduces his current project, Sick Literature, which considers a range of non-psychological illn...
2019-08-161h 05LitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 5 - Epigenetics, Race, Activism Episode 5: Epigenetics, Race, Activism
Or, Who are we and what do we think we’re doing?
Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones
Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Lara Choksey (@larachoksey), postdoctoral research associate at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter. In addition to discussing #litsci aspects of her research and teaching, Lara also explores the intricacies of the language we use to talk about such to...
2019-07-0659 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 4 - Tell it Like a StoryProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones
Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Will Abberley (@WillAbberley), Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Sussex. In addition to discussing #litsci aspects of his research and teaching, Will also explores language in scientific writings, biology and the imagination, human effects on the environment, and the importance of communicating to a broad public.
At the end of the episode, you can hear Will read Grant Allen’s article ‘Strictly Incog’ from t...
2019-06-0148 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 3 - How Many Cultures?Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones
Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Will Tattersdill (@WillTattersdill), Senior Lecturer in Popular Literature at the University of Birmingham. In addition to discussing #litsci aspects of his research and teaching, Will also explores disciplinary boundaries, science fiction, dinosaurs in science and culture (including Dinotopia!), the status of popular literature in the university, and the importance of education and outreach.
At the end of the episode, you can hear Will read the end of H. G. Wells’s novel The Ti...
2019-05-0351 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 2 – The T in STEMProduced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by: Gareth Jones
About this episode:
In this episode, Laura and Cathy dive into the STEM vs. the humanities debate, discussing how funding in post-secondary institutions widens the divide between the humanities and STEm subjects. This week's interview features Alex Goody, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature in the Department of English Literature at Oxford Brookes University. After the interview, you can hear Alex read Mina Loy’s poem, ‘Human Cylinders.’
Bio for Alex Goody:
After comple...
2019-03-2455 minLitSciPod: The Literature and Science PodcastEpisode 1 - What Even is Literature and Science?Episode One: What even is Literature and Science?
Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones
In the first episode of LitSciPod, hosts Laura and Catherine set out to define the field of Literature and Science, which is concerned with investigating and challenging the disciplinary boundaries between the study and practice of literature and that of science. They also tackle one of the most important issues in Literature and Science: how the classroom and the education reinforce these boundaries, often referred to colloquially as the “Two Cultures,’ after the title of C. P...
2019-02-2231 min