Summer Term: Session 1

Biosemiotics and the Book of Nature: Realism, Nominalism and Science Beyond Nihilism and Gnostic Earth-Hatred

Professor Wendy Wheeler (London Met)

Image by randomtruth via flick

6-8pm, Wednesday 2nd May, Senate House, Room 264 (2nd Floor)

Wendy Wheeler is Professor of English Literature and Cultural Inquiry at London Metropolitan University. Her research interests are in contemporary fiction, in literary and cultural theory, and in the ways in which these can inform aesthetic, social and political thought. She is also interested in potential meetings between the arts and sciences. In particular, in evolutionary systems theory (‘complexity’), ecocriticism, ecophenomenology, and biosemiotics, as providing new ways of thinking about human knowing and creativity in terms both of philosophical theory and also creative praxis. 

Wendy is on the Editorial Board of New Formations, and is joint journal Editor. She is also on the Advisory Board of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE-UKI), and on the Advisory Board of its journal Green Letters. Her next monograph, The Human Telos: Biosemiotics, Creativity, Ecocriticism is forthcoming from Lawrence and Wishart and her recent publications include the edited volume Biosemiotics: Nature/Culture/Science/Semiosis (Open Humanities Press, 2011) and the monograph The Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2006).

Recommended Reading:

 Seminar Handout (updated)

Wendy Wheeler Introduction to Biosemiotics: Nature/Culture/Science/Semiosis