Pastoral Sciences

In 1963's The Machine in the Garden Leo Marx introduces the concept of technological pastoral, a space constructed to join modern industry to the ideals of rural harmony. While Marx's own historical reference point may have been the suburban "middle landscape," his notion of technological pastoral can lead into a more general understanding of how science has been mobilized in the pursuit of pastoral ideals. Examples of such mobilizations may range from ecosystem management and experiments with closed ecological systems (like biospheres) to theoretical applications such as terraforming. Virtual utopias may provide even another axis of analysis, as might some branches of bionics and bioengineering.

How might the literary pastoral serve as an heuristic for understanding these and other scientific developments from the late twentieth century through to the present day? How have poets, fiction writers, theorists, and filmmakers used and modified the pastoral mode to represent, explore, and critique such developments? (We might recall that agricultural sciences, at the least, have occupied a crucial space in the literary pastoral since Virgil's Georgics.)

For this panel, papers addressing such questions via a focus on any form of imaginative writing, theory, or film will be considered. Please send an abstract of 200-300 words by April 5th to Dr. Peter Monacell, Assistant Professor of English, Columbia College of Missouri, at plmonacell@ccis.edu.