Author Renée Bergland will speak about her fascinating new book, Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science, with Professor Emeritus Jack L. Sammons.
Bergland explores "how magic invisibly persisted for Darwin, . . . infusing [his] sense of nineteenth-century science with infinite possibility." At the same time "when poetry was often separated from science, the poet who best captured the relationships between science, religion, and magic was Emily Dickenson."
As she states in the introduction, "By putting Emily Dickenson and Charles Darwin on the page together, I hope to open a window into a time before thinkers worked in atomized disciplinary silos, a time when scientists, philosophers, theologians, poets, and political activists were in constant conversation."
Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Simmons University, Bergland is the author of Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer among the American Romantics and The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects.
Co-hosted by NWPL and Yankee Bookshop, this presentation is free and open to all.