Colloquium on Charles Darwin in Europe

A one-day colloquium on Charles Darwin in Europe will be held at Darwin’s alma mater Christ’s College, Cambridge, on Thursday 26 February 2009 to celebrate the bicentenary of his birth as well as launch The Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe, edited by Eve-Marie Engels and Thomas F. Glick. The colloquium will continue the discussions begun in its pages.

The Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe was published in the UK in early December 2008 in two volumes by Continuum (London & New York) and forms part of the Athlone Critical Traditions Series: The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe, edited by Elinor Shaffer.

Yusuf Hamied Theatre

Programme

9.30-10.00: Registration & morning coffee

10.00-10.15: Welcome and introduction:

Prof. Frank Kelly FRS, Master of Christ’s College

Dr Elinor Shaffer FBA, Series Editor & Project Director

10.15-10.45: Prof. Eve-Marie Engels (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)

‘Varieties of the Early Reception of Charles Darwin in Germany’

10.45-11.15: Dr Paul White (Darwin Correspondence Project, Cambridge)

‘The Character of Correspondence’

11.15-11.45: Dr Jonathan Hodge (University of Leeds)

‘Natural Selection and Pangenesis in Europe: Weismann and De Vries’

11.45-12.00: Break

12.00-12.30: Prof. Helmut Pulte (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

‘Darwin and the “Exact Sciences”’

12.30-13.00: Prof. Thomas F. Glick (Boston University)

‘Reception of Darwin: Protestants and Catholics’

13.00-14.00: Lunch (not included in registration fee)

A list of places to eat nearby will be provided for participants.

14.00-14.30: Prof. Peter C. Kjærgaard (Aarhus Universitet)

‘One of us: How Danes appropriated Darwin’

14.30-15.00: Dr Daniel Schümann (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg)

‘The Reception of Darwin’s Ideas in Nineteenth-century Poland’

15.00-15.15: Break

15.15-15.45: A. S. Byatt

‘Darwin, Swedenborg, Angels and Insects: A Novelist’s Encounters with Darwin’

15.45-16.15: Dr Philip Ross Bullock (Wadham College, Oxford)

‘“Gripped in a Vice”: Russian Responses to Darwin from Musorgsky to Tolstoy’

16.15-16.30: Break

16.30-17.00 Prof. Robert Rehder (Université de Fribourg)

‘Poems about Darwin’

17.00-17.30 Dr T. E. Bell (University of Warwick)

‘Benito Pérez Galdós and Darwin’s Reception in Spain’

17.30-18.00 Questions and discussion

18.00-19.00: Wine reception and reading by Emily Ballou from her Darwin poems

Poet, screenwriter and novelist Emily Ballou was awarded a Tyrone Guthrie Centre fellowship in Ireland through the Australia Council for the Arts for her verse portrait of Darwin. Her second novel, Aphelion, was published by Picador, Australia, in 2007. Her collection entitled The Darwin Poems will be published by the University of Western Australia Press in April 2009.

19.00: Colloquium concludes

Registration costs £35 (£40 on the day); concessions £20.

Registration forms and further details are available from the Project Office.