Giving STS a good name...

Wonkette reports that a Dartmouth professor

is suing her class for discrimination, as she revealed in a series of regrettable and bizarre emails that promptly ended up all over Dartmouth blogs. Priya Venkatesan (Dartmouth '90, MS in Genetics, PhD in literature) emailed members of her Winter '08 Writing 5 class Saturday night to announce her intention to seek damages from them for their being mean to her.

Looking at that academic pedigree, I immediately started to worry. Sure enough, she was teaching STS. Her book, Molecular Biology in Narrative Form "is a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary study that shows a connection between molecular biology and French narrative theory."

With many new insights on the link between science (in the form of DNA, a set of codes) and literature (in the form of language, another set of codes), this book looks at modern experimental science within the framework of semiotics. Priya Venkatesan reveals the extraordinary parallel between the work of scientists and the work of narratologists who develop narrative paradigms and analyze literary texts. Molecular Biology in Narrative Form will be a useful resource for scientists and literary theorists interested in the epistemological workings of science, as well as, anyone that desires to explore the linkages between scientific theory and literary analysis.

Two things come to mind. First, didn't Lily Kay and Tim Lenoir do exactly this about 15 years ago? Or does the project just bear a strong resemblance to George Landow's Hypertext, with its argument for unexpected parallels between computer science and literary theory?

And... suing her students? Huh?

[To the tune of Times Online, "The Bugle - Episode 16 - Afghanistan in a zen state of chaos," from the album "The Bugle - Audio Newspaper For A Visual World".]