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Papers by Anahita Rouyan

ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2019

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the Californian press covered a popular theory of heredity ... more At the dawn of the twentieth century, the Californian press covered a popular theory of heredity formulated by Hugo de Vries. Promising agricultural innovation and economic profit, the mutation theory exposed the emergence of a scientific agriculture founded on knowledge about plant heredity. Examining discursive mechanisms governing public representations of experimental life sciences, I show how the discourse employed by the American media and literature to describe this entanglement of academic science and agriculture reflected the degree to which such “nature faking” had been incompatible with the dominant narrative of nature articulated by John Muir and the Californian preservation movement.

Briefings in Bioinformatics

Antibodies are versatile molecular binders with an established and growing role as therapeutics. ... more Antibodies are versatile molecular binders with an established and growing role as therapeutics. Computational approaches to developing and designing these molecules are being increasingly used to complement traditional lab-based processes. Nowadays, in silico methods fill multiple elements of the discovery stage, such as characterizing antibody–antigen interactions and identifying developability liabilities. Recently, computational methods tackling such problems have begun to follow machine learning paradigms, in many cases deep learning specifically. This paradigm shift offers improvements in established areas such as structure or binding prediction and opens up new possibilities such as language-based modeling of antibody repertoires or machine-learning-based generation of novel sequences. In this review, we critically examine the recent developments in (deep) machine learning approaches to therapeutic antibody design with implications for fully computational antibody design.

Public Understanding of Science, 2019

This article examines the representations of genetic modification produced by American science jo... more This article examines the representations of genetic modification produced by American science journalists between 1927 and 1939 to argue that tracing the history of public engagement with genetics research may unveil factors that have contributed to the formulation of contemporary public perceptions of GMOs. In particular, the following analysis of press coverage unveils the early examples of framing genetic manipulation as a scientific production of monsters.

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2019

The paper traces a debate about species transmutation that unfolded in agricultural periodicals p... more The paper traces a debate about species transmutation that unfolded in agricultural periodicals published in the Northeastern United States between 1820 and 1859. The reformers who curated the content of these publications promoted agricultural improvement by disseminating knowledge about relevant science and technology topics. The widespread belief in the transmutation of grains provided them with an opportunity for sharing scientific knowledge about plant heredity and botanical classification systems, encouraging experimentation among audiences prejudiced against “book farming,” and recalling to the tenets of natural theology which described nature as orderly and predictable. The reformers did not manage to eradicate the belief in species transmutation which remained popular throughout the nineteenth century. However, in their assessment of the theoretical contributions of botanists and practical experiments conducted by farmers, they negotiated the authority of scientific expertise in the study of nature and delineated standards of scientific inquiry into agricultural matters. The reformers' engagement with the transmutation debate thus contributed to the professionalization of agricultural improvement, laying the groundwork for the activities of agricultural research institutions that emerged in the second half of the century.

Biological Discourses The Language of Science and Literature Around 1900, 2017

The chapter analyses H. G. Wells’s characterization of the The Time Machine’s protagonist and nar... more The chapter analyses H. G. Wells’s characterization of the The Time Machine’s protagonist and narrator, the Time Traveller, whose story serves as part of Wells’s broader strategy for criticising late Victorian modalities of science communication to non-specialist audiences. The Traveller’s ability to translate his scientific expertise into economic and social mobility is accompanied by ‘gift of speech’ which positions him as a potential popularizer of scientific knowledge. Wells addresses this capacity in his narrative of the future, which is embedded in late Victorian cultural discourses founded on misinterpretations of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. As a scientist who fails to distance himself from popular fallacies about evolution, the Traveller’s persona reflects deep frustration with widespread misunderstandings of science: a frustration which Wells concurrently expressed in his journalism.

Utopian Studies, 2015

Ruth Ozeki structures the narrative of All Over Creation around the cultivation of a transgenic f... more Ruth Ozeki structures the narrative of All Over Creation around the cultivation of a transgenic food crop, which provokes a debate exploiting a number of widespread representations of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The article focuses on the anti-GMO rhetoric, which offers a utopian discourse of agriculture clearly embedded within the pastoral convention, with genetic modification techniques represented as an intrusive “machine in the garden” and the mythological figure of the farmer exploited to fit the scope of the American context of the story. Exposing the conventions and mythologies behind the environmentalist narrative against the genetic engineering of plants, Ozeki’s text demonstrates how the contrasting anti-GMO utopianism and pro-GMO techno-utopianism are both deeply rooted in the Western tradition, with its cultural and linguistic tendencies to objectify nature and conceptualize it as a female. Examining the value of genetically modified crops to different social groups. Ozeki’s narrative accurately represents the complexities surrounding the contemporary practice of agriculture and opens up a discursive space for reformulating the rarely explored human–plant relationship, suggesting that neither kind of utopianism can serve as a conceptual framework for assessing the potential dangers and benefits of the introduction of GMOs into ecosystems and human bodies.

Partial Answers, 2017

Thomas Pynchon’s interest in music is audibly reflected in the rich intertextual environments of ... more Thomas Pynchon’s interest in music is audibly reflected in the rich intertextual environments of his works such as Gravity’s Rainbow, a novel which includes numerous allusions to musical pieces, descriptions of performances, and song lyrics. The latter stand out from prose narrative as they introduce new diegetic dimensions to the novel by offering playful commentary on its plot and characters. The present study examines the novel’s acoustic background, pointing to the formal structure of songs and its role in locating singing human voices in opposition to noises emitted by technological devices such as V2 rockets. A classification scheme shows how Pynchon’s formal experimentation juxtaposes written and oral variants of language, thus connecting songs to one of the novel’s thematic centers — problematics of order. This function of songs is examined in an episode of Vaslav Tchitcherine’s mission of promoting literacy among oral tribes of Kazakhstan, that serves as a commentary on the conventional character of writing systems and their ability to transform the poetic quality of language into a systematic structure.

Orbit: A Journal of American Literature, 2013

Among the cultural texts used by Thomas Pynchon in Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) figures a classic fai... more Among the cultural texts used by Thomas Pynchon in Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) figures a classic fairy tale of “Hansel and Gretel”. It is here that the author initially develops the theme of bad parents and victimized children, a subject elaborated throughout Gravity’s Rainbow. By placing the fairy tale in a broader framework of Teutonic mythology, with its heathen gods and goddesses, Pynchon demonstrates the workings of cultural conditioning not only on individual characters, but also on narratives initially unfit in the dominant culture. The theme of “Hansel and Gretel” refers to one of the central questions of Gravity’s Rainbow as well, that of the possibility of freedom for a culturally conditioned entity, be it an individual or a narrative.

Book Reviews by Anahita Rouyan

Internet Histories. Digital Technology, Culture and Society , 2017

In the most recent documentary, the filmmaker Werner Herzog invites viewers to join him on a tour... more In the most recent documentary, the filmmaker Werner Herzog invites viewers to join him on a tour of stories that explore the manifestations of the Internet's defining trait: connectedness. Each of the ten episodes investigates a different topic, following a meandering, daydream-like narrative that presents aspects of the current technological expansion. Herzog remains faithful to the chronological narrative model as he shows the Internet's origin, its current applications, imagined end, and possible futures.