Reflecting on Darwin

Introduction: cultural reflections on Darwin and their historical evolution, Monika Pietrzak-Franger and Eckart Voigts; Part 1 The Cultural Evolution of Darwin’s Thought: ‘I differ widely from you’: Darwin, Galton and the culture of eugenics, Angelique Richardson; Evolution, heredity and visuality: reading faces with Thomas Hardy, Susanne Scholz; ‘How like us is that ugly brute, the ape!’: Darwin’s ‘ape theory’ and its traces in Victorian children’s magazines, Jochen Petzold; Gender trouble as monkey business: changing roles of simian characters in literature and film between 1870 and 1930, Julika Griem. Part 2 Darwin’s Cultural Resonance Today: Neo-Victorian Darwin: representations of the 19th-century scientist, naturalist and explorer in 21st-century women’s writing, Ann Heilmann; (Mis-)representations of Darwin’s Origin and evolutionary master narratives in The Sea (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), Felix C.H. Sprang; Evolution for better or for worse? Science fiction literature and film and the public debate on the future of humanity, Angela Schwarz. Part 3 Darwin as ‘Pop Star’ of Contemporary Theory: Displacing humans, reconfiguring Darwin in contemporary culture and theory, Virginia Richter; Ordering Darwin: evolution and normativity, Nils Wilkinson; The limits of sociobiology: is there a sociobiological explanation of culture?, Matthias Gutmann; ‘Survival of the fittest’ in Darwin metaphysics: tautology or testable theory?, Momme von Sydow; Index.