I'm such a nerd

So I’ve been totally stoked this last week because of a call for papers flier I found at PCA asking for articles for the Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society. Yes, you read that right. “Stoked” and an academic journal in the same sentence.

See, I’ve had this idea about the effects of thermodynamics and chaos theory on modernist and postmodernist literature (respectively). I’ve been looking for something to do with it. I was thinking I’d have to decide between that idea and another one (my idea about masks worn by slasher killers in horror movies - and by extension insanity, a version of a mask - as a manifestation of the technology fear that underlies most horror) for PCA next year. But BSTS wants articles for two special issues concerning the influence of science and technology on literature and popular culture.

My article idea comes from a paper I wrote about the Tom Stoppard play Arcadia. The play is all about chaos theory and how it makes scientific notions like entropy and heat death less scary; it gives this really cool way of looking at history as a complex system, governed by the rules put forth in nonlinear dynamics (a fancier term for chaos theory). But the discussion in my paper is really science-heavy, and I’m pretty sure most lit people would go cross-eyed trying to decipher it. I wanted to add discussion of the movie Pi to it, but was warned that that would render it not very publishable except in popular culture journals (I was not as bothered by this notion as the person giving me the warning, but oh well). I’ve also revised my idea a little bit since the first version of the paper. After re-reading Eliot’s The Waste Land in a modernism course a year or two ago, I realized how influenced TWL seems to be by the discovery/development of the laws of thermodynamics. Arcadia almost seems to be Stoppard’s way of telling Eliot and modernists who shared his anxieties to take a chill pill. Anyway, long story short, I’ve arrived at this idea that looks at modernists and the apparent influence of advancements in thermodynamics (The Waste Land and “The Second Coming” by Yeats in particular) and then at contemporary literature & popular culture (specifically Arcadia, Pi, Jurassic Park, and the tv show Numb3rs) and how chaos theory is portrayed in them (along with how some of the anxiety present in the modernist works is relieved), ultimately pointing out how, regardless of the slight revisions chaos theory can provide to one’s world view, both time periods still seem to agree that chaos/unpredictability is comforting while predictability is scary.

I’ve got the abstract that is supposed to be submitted first written out and I’m in the process of revising it. If it gets accepted, rock on me. If not, this will probably be what I do for PCA next year. But I’m really looking forward to the possibility of getting to write this up and publish it. I think that someone, somewhere, will appreciate it.