Members of the Fuller Society gathered in Toronto, Canada to give a variety of presentations. On the first day of the convention, Christina Katopodis (Second Vice President) presented on Thursday, January 8, “Unfurling Taxonomies: Margaret Fuller’s Responses to Science in ‘Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain'” on a panel focused on the relationship between literature and taxonomy.
On Saturday, January 10, our Fuller Society sponsored panel, “Margaret Fuller and Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers Observing Nature, Engaging Science,” featured papers by Alice de Galzain (MFS Advisory Board), Thomas Howard, and Maxime Fecteau and was presided by Christina Katopodis.
de Galzain spoke about “The Possibility of Mutual Flourishing” in the works of Margaret Fuller, Caroline Healey Dall, and Marianne Dwight Orvis, emphasizing female agency in Fuller’s short story, “Yuca Filamentosa” (1842), Dall’s Historical Pictures Retouched, and Dwight’s watercolors. de Galzain, through the lens afforded by Sarah Ahmed’s work on emotion, highlighted the important lesson of “wait and trust” in botany.
Howard’s paper focused on Emily Dickinson and the poetics of science, inviting us to “think botanically” with Dickinson, emphasizing plant agency. He traced Dickinson’s scientific thinking through her correspondence, and framed her scientific thinking in poetry as the art that “precedes science”–Charles Darwin writes that art precedes science because it is “experience & observation.”
Fecteau presented, “What Mystery Pervades a Well!”: Lynn Margulis in Conversation with Emily Dickinson” and delighted us with Margulis’s poetic thinking about microbiology and symbiosis. Margulis lived next door to Emily Dickinson’s Amherst homestead, claimed to “hear” Dickinson during her walks through Amherst, and wove the poet’s verses into her scientific presentations.
On Saturday January 10, Koritha Mitchell read aloud Eagan Dean’s remarkable presentation, “Against the Clinical Gaze on Life Writing: Louisa May Alcott and Self-Narrated Gender,” which was followed by great interest and robust discussion. Jay Grossman commented that it was a “provocative” and “convincing” paper.
MFS members and panelists convened for a Fuller Society lunch and dinner on Saturday when we were able to continue our conversations. It was such a joy for all of us to be together for a large part of the day, and it often felt as if our fellow members were there with us as we shared stories and admiration for our colleagues and friends.
On Sunday, January 11, MFA Member Ariel Silver presided on the panel, “Family Resemblances: Hawthorne’s Extended Bloodlines.”
