Débattre de l'évolution

„Streitfall Evolution. Eine Kulturgeschichte“ (Debating Evolution. A Cultural History)

to be published by Boehlau (Vienna, Cologne, Weimar). Some of the chapters are as yet unassigned.

The volume cover a wide range of perspectives and disciplines and their approaches to the public debate of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in the past 150 years, including history, history of science, theology, sociology, political sciences, philosophy art history, literary studies, media studies and history of law. Its seven sections with a total of some fifty chapters deal with various aspects and levels of the debate, its actors, arguments, strategies and media as they shaped the way evolution appeared in public discourse.

The individual chapters are written by experts in the respective fields and incorporating state-of-the art research. However, as the volume does not address an academic public but a general public, texts need to present more of an overview instead of single case studies analyzed in depth and from a particular point of view. Each chapter comprises roughly 45,000 to 50,000 characters (including footnotes, this is some 6,700 words in a German-language text) and about 6 to 8 illustrations that are part of the text’s argument, thus more than mere illustrations. Manuscripts for the greater part of the chapters have already been submitted, by Peter Becker, Peter Bowler, Janet Browne, Nicholas Gilham, Mike Hawkins, Uwe Hossfeld, Thomas Junker, Nils Roll-Hansen, Nicolaas Rupke, Marianne Sommer, Heinrich Zankl to name but a few of the authors. However, the following chapters relevant to the volume are as yet unassigned:

- “Missing Link”: connecting piece and icon of the scientific and popular debates on evolution in the past 150 years
- Presenting evolution in the zoo: a theory and its illustration using living specimen
- Images of the scientist in today’s public
- Social darwinism and politics in the twentieth-century
- Social darwinism as a phenomen in the twenty-first century
- Experimenting with humans, breeding humans: Concepts and implementations in Nazi Germany
- Ethical debates on genetic engineering today
- Evolution/Darwinism in Fiction (emphasis on novels and short stories)
- Darwin and evolution on radio and TV in the bicentenary (recordings of the material mainly of German and British broadcasts may be provided)
- The future of the debate on evolution

Outlines sketching the contents of the individual chapters may be forwarded on request, though there is still room for discussion of their focus and orientation.

Deadline for the manuscripts is August 15, 2013.

Those interested are invited to forward a short cv and a list of relevant publications to the editor of the volume

Prof. Dr. Angela Schwarz, History Department, University of Siegen, Germany : schwarz@geschichte.uni-siegen.de