Professor of Comparative Literature Peter Rabinowitz gave talks at the STAR conference ("Science, Theater, Audience, Reader") held at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, on March 3 and 4. The event was intended to foster exchange among the sciences, the arts, and the humanities, and it included the participation of such diverse people as physicist Alan Lightman (author of Einstein's Dreams), physicist David Gross (Nobel Laureate 2004), novelist Rebecca Goldstein, and New York Times science writer Dennis Overbye.
Rabinowitz's first paper, "Science and Narrative," took off from his previous work on music and narrative to offer a rhetorical analysis of the various ways in which novelists use science to manipulate their readers. The second, "Arcadia Paradox," dealt with self-referentiality (even self-cancellation) in Tom Stoppard's play, arguing that, in the end, it traps its audience by undermining its own initial premises.
Both papers stemmed from Rabinowitz's work in sophomore seminars—his seminar on Time with James Ring, of the Physics Department, and the Infinity Seminar he is currently teaching with Sally Cockburn of the Math Department.
