Special Issue
Critical Survey
Deadline: October 1, 2014

The journal Critical Survey seeks submissions of completed 4000-5000 word articles exploring literary engagements with Victorian sciences. From Darwin, to physiology, to pre-Freudian psychology, to engineering and technology, and beyond, Victorian Britain experienced rapid change – but often seemed ambivalent about whether, as Robert Browning’s Andrea del Sarto puts it, “man’s reach should exceed his grasp.”  This peer-reviewed, special issue of Critical Survey will explore the relationship between literature (all genres and forms acceptable) and science in Victorian Britain through:

• rhetorical analyses of Victorian scientific texts (i.e. Darwin’s Plots)
• examinations of science in Victorian critical discourses about literature (i.e. The Physiology of the Novel)
• Victorian literary representations of science
• historically invested deployments of more recent, scientifically-minded critical trends (i.e. affect theories, cognitive theories, etc.)
• other interactions between science and literature relevant to Victorian studies

Scientific topics may include, but are not limited to: biology, physiology, anatomy, chemistry, physics, psychology, sociology, techniques of classification, technological developments.

Please send inquiries and completed 4000-5000 word essays to Peter Katz at pjkatz@syr.edu. Articles are due by October 1, 2014, with the intent to publish in the first half of 2015.