En/VC 116 - Picturing the Universe

Whether you are a physicist, photographer, or bibliophile, grab a warm jacket. The night sky beckons. We will study 19th-century literary, artistic, and scientific responses to new understandings of the universe as dynamic, decentered, and limitless. In Victorian England, picturing the universe in literature and recording celestial light in photographs defied the physiological limitations of human observation and fueled larger debates about objective evidence and subjective documentation. We will examine how these historic contexts continue to shape how we picture the universe in the 21st-century.