Professor of Comparative Literature Peter J. Rabinowitz delivered a paper, “Doctor Atomic Meets Frankenstein: Science, Ethics, and Rhetoric,” at the 25th International Conference on Narrative in Cleveland on April 10. 

Part of a continuing project on the rhetorical uses of science in narrative, the paper charted out four ways in which science is used to support (or undermine) the ethical positions taken by literary characters. The paper concluded with an analysis of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic, demonstrating how, by encouraging readers to deploy conflicting interpretive strategies, the opera creates its particular ethically unsettling effects.