Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, University of Glasgow
Date: Friday 26th February 2016
Registration: free via our Eventbrite page
This workshop seeks to explore the links between science fiction, utopia, and medicine. Utopian literature and philosophy contributed immensely to the establishment of science fiction as a genre and as a social discourse. We will be asking what effects this has had for medical technoscience and its public reception, and how medical science itself takes part in the discourse of science fiction.
Gavin Miller and Anna McFarlane will facilitate the event as part of the Wellcome Trust-funded Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities project. They will be joined by Professor Richard Ashcroft (Professor of Bioethics at Queen Mary University London School of Law) whose work explores bioethics as a kind of utopian thought and who will be presenting on ‘Weird Bioethics: Reflections via M John Harrison’s Signs of Life‘. We are also pleased to welcome Chris Pak (Lancaster University), research assistant on a project entitled ‘People’, ‘Products’, ‘Pests’ and ‘Pets’: The Discursive Representation of Animals,who will be speaking on the subject of ‘”Medicine, Magic, Witchcraft, Fountains of Youth and Utopia”: Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities’.
The workshop will be held at the University of Glasgow on Friday the 26th of February 2016. Those making travel arrangements should note that there will be coffee available from 9.30 for a 10.30 start. Postgraduate and early career researchers may wish to apply to the attendance fund, which will be allocated on a first come first served basis, to support their travel expenses by emailing their requests to arts-scifimedhums[at]glasgow.ac.uk. You can also join our mailing list for this and future events by sending us an email.
Information about travelling to the university can be found on the University of Glasgow website. To register, visit our Eventbrite page.