Science and Technology of the later Nineteenth Century: Zola and his Contemporaries
Sciences et techniques dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle : Zola et ses contemporains
Published on Friday, April 04, 2025
Abstract
We invite proposals for conference papers on all aspects of science et technology relative to Émile Zola, Naturalist thinkers and writers, and scientists of the second half of the nineteenth century.
Announcement
Argument
This international literary and multidisciplinary Conference on science and technology in the era of Émile Zola is organised by the École Polytechnique, the Émile Zola Society (London), and the Centre d’étude sur Zola et le Naturalisme (ITEM CNRS/ENS-PSL).
We invite proposals for conference papers on all aspects of science et technology relative to Émile Zola, Naturalist thinkers and writers, and scientists of the second half of the nineteenth century. The colloquium works both within and beyond the borders of France. Internationally, scientists in this era engaged in experimental and theoretically in areas epistemological, ethical and political, pedagogical, and social. Scientific advances across the later nineteenth century had major impact(s) on society and culture. The reverberations of scientific and technological change shaped debates and discussion, enabled innovations, and sparked artistic, literary, and scientific controversies. Many of the interrogations of that era continue to resonate powerfully in our own age of accelerating scientific, technical, and technological change.
The conference has four main axes:
1.Scientific memory: its history and its methods
- Scientific archives: philological, genetic, and cultural approaches to collections, manuscripts, typescripts, and epistolary sources
- Epistemological methods of the later nineteenth century and the cultures of technology: advertising, forms of popularisation, pedagogy, the press, world exhibitions; claims and counter-claims, deception and trickery (Zola), parodies of invention (Villiers de l’Isle Adam), alienation, and naivety (Flaubert).
2. Interdisciplinary approaches to the works of Zola and Naturalist writers
The focus here is on literary, artistic, documentary, and journalistic representations of science and technology:
- Fictions, myths, and visual representations of the writer as physician, scientist, polymath, and engineer
- The role of documenters, popularisers, encyclopaedic genetics and poetics (word-and-image representations of technical innovations; the integration of science in narrative fiction); experimental methods and the relations between doctrinal naturalism and naturalist fiction ;
- Technophilia / technophobia : values, debates, and controversies around ‘progress’ (political, aesthetic, moral).
3. The contemporary reception of scientific and technological heritage of Naturalist writers and scientific community of the second half of the nineteenth century:
the posthuman, the digital machine, robotics, the postcolonial, European and global entanglements; gender; ethical and cultural challenges. This will allow us to draw out the connections, and also the breaks, between the past and the c20th and c21st, and establish fresh paradigms for understanding the contemporary history of science beyond analogies and symmetries.
4. The editing and interpreting of archives and the cultural legacy of science in the 21st century through the prism of digital technologies (semantic web, digital humanities, Text Encoding Initiative, Artificial Intelligence) and medical advances (genetics, cloning, transplant surgery)
Submission guidelines
We invite proposals (max. 300 words) for papers of 20 minutes. Papers may be given in English or French. Please indicate 4–6 key words that capture your angle of approach to the conference topic. Proposals should be accompanied by a short bio-bibliographic profile.
We also invite proposals for panels of 3–4 speakers including the lead proposer of the panel. Panel proposals, submitted by the panel lead, will comprise an overview and raison d'être of the panel together with the proposals of each speaker.
Proposals, individual and panel, should be submitted on: https://sciencezola2026.sciencesconf.org
by 30 May 2025
Organising committee
- Olivier Bertrand, École polytechnique, IP Paris & CY Cergy Paris Université
- Susan Harrow, University of Bristol & Emile Zola Society
- Olivier Lumbroso, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, DILTEC & ITEM-CNRS
- Jean-Sébastien Macke, Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes, CNRS/ENS
- Chantal Morel, Émile Zola Society
- Isabelle Schaffner,École polytechnique, IP Paris, LinX & ITEM-CNRS
Scientific committee
- Marie Dupond, Association François Guizot
- Elisabeth Emery, Montclair State University
- Céline Grenaud-Tostain, Université d'Évry-Val d'Essonne & ITEM-CNRS
- Emmylou Haffner, Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes, CNRS/ENS
- Susan Harrow, University of Bristol & Emile Zola Society
- Olivier Lumbroso, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, DILTEC & ITEM-CNRS
- Muriel Louâpre, Université Paris-Cité & CERILAC
- Jean-Sébastien Macke, Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes, CNRS/ENS
- Chantal Morel, Emile Zola Society
- Isabelle Schaffner, École polytechnique, IP Paris, LinX & ITEM-CNRS
- Jacques Noiray, Sorbonne Université
- Alain Pagès, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, CRP19 & ITEM-CNRS
- Nicholas White, University of Cambridge
Subjects
- Europe (Main category)
Places
- École Polytechnique
Palaiseau, France (91477) - École Normale Supérieure - rue d'Ulm
Paris, France (75005)
Event attendance modalities
Full on-site event
Date(s)
- Friday, May 30, 2025
Attached files
Keywords
- Emlile Zola, science, littérature, technique, épistémologie
Contact(s)
- Isabelle Schaffner
courriel : isabelle [dot] schaffner [at] polytechnique [dot] edu - Jean-Sébastien Macke
courriel : jean-sebastien [dot] macke [at] cnrs [dot] fr - Suzan Harrow
courriel : s [dot] r [dot] harrow [at] bristol [dot] ac [dot] uk
Reference Urls
Information source
- Jean-Sébastien Macke
courriel : jean-sebastien [dot] macke [at] cnrs [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Science and Technology of the later Nineteenth Century: Zola and his Contemporaries », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Friday, April 04, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/13orv
