See more about the conference on the Entanglements site »

The 2019 Reynolda Conference, Entanglements: A Conference on the Intersections of Poetry, Science, and Art, will bring together a diverse range of leading poets, scientists, artists, and scholars whose work engages with transdisciplinary investigations into shared principles and methods in literature, science, and art. Entanglements is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with an award granted by the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute. Additional sponsors are the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute with a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Creative Writing Minor in the English Department, and IPLACe at Wake Forest University.

Entanglements is named after the quantum mechanical phenomenon of entanglement in which states of subatomic particles are intertwined with each other despite being spatially separated. Entanglements has been organized as a National Endowment for the Humanities-style symposium, where invited participants come together for discussion in open and closed sessions, and a literary and arts festival with public events featuring the invited participants.

Throughout literary and artistic history there is a tradition of poets and artists rigorously engaging with science in their work. Similarly, there is a tradition of scientists rigorously engaging with art and literature. The invited participants of Entanglements are interested in forging new ways to approach the fields in which they work by ambitiously moving outside of and between established categories, boundaries, and borders. By challenging assumptions about the ordinary limits of literature, art, and science and what they share or where they depart, the participants often think broadly about their subjects of study and creative and scholarly practices.

The themes to be examined in the open and closed sessions with the invited participants include the historical, contemporary, and future intersections of literature, science, and art; collaborations between institutions and individuals across these disciplines; innovative pedagogy at these intersections; and publication, funding, and dissemination of ideas and projects. The primary questions to be engaged are: What innovative projects—art, artifacts, texts, songs, performances, dialogues, theoretical frameworks, experiments, models, and intergenre inventions—are being done at the intersections of poetry, science, and art? What is possible at these intersections for the future? What pioneering projects have come before, and how have they been received? What theoretical, ethical, and practical problems arise when working at the intersections of literature, art, and science, and how can these problems be addressed? For those invited participants in teaching positions, what methods are being developed to teach at these transdisciplinary intersections?

Entanglements will provide three days of innovative academic scholarship and creative practice. The public events will provide the communities of Wake Forest University and the Triad area of North Carolina an enriched setting in which to explore the intersections of science, art, and literature. Entanglements is being convened by Wake Forest University Associate Professor and Poet-in-Residence Amy Catanzano, who won the Humanities Institute’s 2019 Reynolda Conference Award to convene the conference.

About the Reynolda Conference

The Reynolda Conference, awarded by the Humanities Institute at Wake Forest University, is funded by a grant for Engaged Humanities from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Reynolda Conference competitive grant offers faculty $20,000 to hold a three- to five-day seminar on a humanities topic of their choice. The grant award supports travel, lodging, and stipends for invited scholars of the conference planner’s choosing, as well as stipends for participating WFU and Triad area scholars.