HARTS & Minds Issue 8 (2016): Science, Society, and Civilisation (Deadline 31st March 2016)

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HARTS & Minds

This call for papers invites submissions from postgraduates, early career researchers and independent researchers on the subject of Science, Society and Civilisation for the eighth edition of HARTS & Minds, an online journal for researchers of the Humanities and Arts, which is due to be published in 2016.

The year is 2016. Three hundred and fifty years ago, in 1666, Isaac Newton formulated the Law of Universal Gravitation; two hundred and fifty years later, the publication of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity would once again revolutionise the field of physics. In that same year, 1916, during the advent of mechanised warfare on the fields of the Somme, the first successful use of cooled, stored blood in a transfusion was completed. A mere eighty years later, in 1996, the first successful clone of an adult mammal was created, just ten years after the catastrophic Chernobyl disaster. Scientifically speaking, such coincidences are not unusual. Nevertheless, rarely have the consequences of Homo sapiens' predilection for knowledge been thrown into such sharp relief.

It is not just the inventions and ideas alone which are significant, however; the social and cultural reactions to scientific and technological advances are as important as the advances themselves because they tell us as much about the human condition as they do their subject.

In this bumper issue of HARTS & Minds, we invite innovative submissions that consider how the relationship between science and society is represented, explored, and interrelated within a wide variety of cultural and historical discourses. Interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged. Pieces may take, as a point of departure, any of the following topics, as they are explored in the arts and humanities:

- Medical Humanities – its purview and function

- Biological or psychological discoveries, and mankind's changing perception of itself

- Science or technology in performance or conceptual art

- Global warming/climate change, renewable energy, and resource depletion

- Automation, and its social or political consequences

- Modern scientific education and/or educational science

- Evidence-based policy in government

- The explicatory or obfuscatory aspects of fictionalised science

- Media depictions of, and relationships with, scientific discourse

- Gender and minority roles in the scientific community

- The implications of translation technology for the study of modern languages

- The artistic applications of new developments in cinematic technology

- The history of science and/or scientific approaches to history

- The ongoing relationship between science and philosophy

- The history of philosophy – rationalism, phenomenology, epistemology, ontology

- Recent pharmaceutical discoveries and/or recent drug liberalisation policies

- Normalisation of social networking, and questions regarding data security, digital rights, anonymity

Submissions should adhere to the guidelines and use the article template available on our website www.harts-minds.co.uk, where you can also find our past editions.

We accept submissions of:

- ARTICLES: Send us an abstract (300 words) and your draft article (no longer than 6,000 words).

- BOOK REVIEWS: Around 1,000 words on an academic text that deals with the theme in some respect. This would preferably be interdisciplinary, but we will accept reviews of subject specific texts.

- EXHIBITION REVIEWS: Around 1,000 words on any event along the lines of an art exhibition, museum collection, academic event or conference review that deals with the theme in some respect.

- CREATIVE WRITING PIECES: e.g. original poetry (up to 3 short or 1 long) short stories or creative essays of up to 4,000 words related to the theme.

All submissions should be sent to editors@harts-minds.co.uk by 31st March 2016 for Articles and 31st July 2016 for Creative Writing and Reviews.

Please keep in mind that HARTS & Minds is intended as a truly inter-disciplinary journal, and esoteric topics will therefore need to be written with a general academic readership in mind.