Introduction: The State of the Unions.

摘要

The seeds for this special issue of the Journal of Literature and Science were sown in2014 when Will Tattersdill and Melissa Littlefield found themselves talking aboutliterature, science, lie detectors, and dinosaurs at the “Objects of Modernity”symposium hosted by the University of Birmingham, UK. As the conversation turnedto methodology, the two noted some potentially striking differences between UK andUS Literature and Science scholarship. Thanks to a BRIDGE project grant betweenthe University of Birmingham (UK) and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign(US), Tattersdill and Littlefield were able to pursue their questions through a two-daysymposium on the topic of “Literature and Science: A Transatlantic Exchange.” Theirambition was to investigate the differences and divisions between the US and the UK;but what they found instead was a surplus of solidarities. Discussion turned, as it oftendoes, to a history of the field, including the Society for Literature, Science and theArts (US) and the British Society for Literature and Science, and to the question: aredistinctions between methods, proper objects, and milieu in the US and UK merelyartifacts of the past? By the end of the symposium, a plan was hatched to curate twoconjoined special issues, one in the UK and one in the US.