Science: Dramatic
Science Plays in America and Great Britain, 1990-2007
Published in March 2012
XII, 380 pages
978-3-8253-7323-8 (ISBN)
Description
"Science Plays" form a flourishing dramatic sub-genre. The present study provides an informative overview shedding light on the diversity of ways in which the natural sciences and/or scientists are put on stage. Detailed text-based analyses of eighteen plays, many of them previously unexamined elsewhere, exemplify the genre's remarkable variety. "Classics" such as 'Copenhagen' and 'Arcadia' are discussed, as well as e.g. 'Proof', 'QED', 'Taboos', 'Remembering Miss Meitner', 'An Experiment With an Air Pump', 'Blinded by the Sun' and 'Einstein's Gift'. All plays look critically at scientific progress or promise, pointing at socio-political and ethical challenges for today as well as the future.
The plays' analyses are embedded into discussions of two vital discourses, the Two Cultures and the Science Wars, as well as the drama vs. performance studies paradigm. Together with background material on various themes, events and personae, 'Science: Dramatic' broadens into a comprehensive work on the science-drama-society interface.
The plays' analyses are embedded into discussions of two vital discourses, the Two Cultures and the Science Wars, as well as the drama vs. performance studies paradigm. Together with background material on various themes, events and personae, 'Science: Dramatic' broadens into a comprehensive work on the science-drama-society interface.
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Book
09/2009
1st Edition
Universitätsverlag Winter
€34.00
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Content
- Intro
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. Science or Theater: From "Two Cultures" to the "Science Wars
- From Burlington House to Chelsea: Snow and the two Cultures
- Literature" vs. "Science
- Numerous Cultures
- One-Way Streets" and "Idea Shuttles
- The "Science Wars
- 2. In Defense of the Dramatic Text
- Conceptual Crisis in Theater Studies
- A Semantic Impossibility
- John L. Austin and the Speech-Act
- Deconstructivist Derrida
- Austin as Performer
- Judith Butler
- The Ephemeral Character of Performance
- Theater Semiotics: Performance Text vs. Dramatic Text
- The Dramatic Text vs. Performance, and the Post-Dramatic Theater
- Truces and the Decisive Role of the Dramatic Text
- 3. Science and Theater: Liaison Dangereuse or Amour Magique?
- Science Plays: A Rainbow-Colored Umbrella Term
- Science Plays: A new Taxonomy
- Drama as Text
- The Science play and its Gamut
- 4. "Science-In-Theater
- Docere et Delectare
- Art, Icsi and the Consequences
- Ego Theorists meet Bundle Theorists
- The Tribal Culture of the Scientists, then and now
- Ambition Without Love is Cold
- Priortity and Kudos
- Moral Ethics vs. Scientific Ethos
- The Tragedy of the German Jew
- Calculating Probabilities
- Proof vs. Trust, Genius vs. Madness
- Man and Mortality
- Applied Cause and Effect Logic
- Hungry Little Questions. How? [...] No cause
- Everything is Reducible in the Ende
- 5. "History of Science in Theater
- In fond Memory: Rescued "From the Dustbins of History
- Physics, Chemistry and Memory
- James Watson's Creation of "Rosy
- Replaying the Moment
- Epistemology of Intention
- 6. Borderliners
- Science to play with
- Sex and Literature. Literature and Sex
- Science as Fig Leaf
- A Study of Obsession
- For the Rights of the Disabled
- Genocide on the Balkan
- Feynman in the Desert
- Finis
- Bibliography
