Fi-Sci | An Evening with Rhona Trauvitch in conversation with Leanne Wells

🎟 This event is FREE and open to the public, and books will be available for purchase the night of the event! An RSVP grants general entry, but seating is not guaranteed, so please try to show up early. Please RSVP only if you intend to join us. Can't make the event? Buy your copy here.

About The Book

In Fi-Sci, Rhona Trauvitch melds literary and scientific thought to advance a theory of how narrative, and specifically fictionality, is one of the most powerful tools we have for understanding science, particularly those concepts that defy imagination. Centering her argument on a rhetorical approach to fictionality, she proposes that fiction uniquely offers a means of conceptualizing and understanding perplexing and counterintuitive scientific phenomena, such as recombinant DNA or quantum superposition: Through finding analogous patterns in fiction, we can open up new pathways to understanding. Put another way, our abilities to perceive strange and confounding science phenomena are bolstered and even enabled by our experiences with fiction.

Drawing on a range of theorists such as James Phelan, Gérard Genette, Erwin Schrödinger, and others in her analysis of texts by Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Ursula K. Le Guin, Richard Powers, and many more, Trauvitch shows how literary forms—such as metafiction, metalepsis, and recursion—mirror and clarify complex scientific concepts including genetics, spacetime curvature, and quantum mechanics. In this way, she shows us how fiction is key to unlocking conceptual access to the indiscernible and inconceivable.

About The Author

Rhona Trauvitch, Ph.D., specializes in cross-disciplinary analogical reasoning at the intersection of literature and STEM. She developed the fiction→science, or fi-sci, pattern mapping model, which involves identifying commonalities between works of fiction and science processes. Her research shows that when science and fiction share a form, analogy helps us reason about one domain in terms of the other. Cross-disciplinary analogies establish that fictionality has the rhetorical power to promote science accessibility, foregrounding a crucial aspect of fictionality's societal impact: Because it boosts cognitive apprehension of STEM, fiction can help us better fathom complex, multivariate phenomena—from public health and ecological systems to paradigm-shifting technological advancements.

Dr. Trauvitch’s introduction to fi-sci appears in the Narratologies of Science special issue of the Journal of Narrative Theory (2023), she is co-editor with James Phelan of Fictionality and Science in Dialogue, a special issue of the journal Style, and her monograph Fi-Sci: Avatars of Science in Fiction is forthcoming from the Ohio State University Press.

The pedagogical application of Dr. Trauvitch's research is led by FIU’s Science & Fiction Lab, of which she is Founding Director. Since 2021 the Lab has leveraged the fi-sci model in service of sparking integrative teaching and learning. Dr. Trauvitch is the principal investigator of Lab projects for which she has secured two major federal research grants: in 2023 a $150,000 Humanities Initiatives award from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and in 2025 a $400,000 Improving Undergraduate STEM Education award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Supported by this funding, FIU faculty have been using the pattern mapping framework to break down curricular silos, guiding students to apply and translate their expertise to new contexts so that they may approach complex challenges with interdisciplinary fluency.

Dr. Trauvitch teaches face-to-face, online, and hybrid courses in narrative theory, multimedial popular culture, and the confluence of literature and science, including science fiction. She was awarded a Faculty Senate Award for Excellence in Teaching (2018), a RETI (Rewarding Excellence in Teaching Incentive) Award (2022), and CASE Faculty Recognition Awards for Teaching (2017; 2023) and Research (2024; 2025).

About The Moderator

Leanne Wells is Senior Director for Teaching and Learning Success at Florida International University, where she has spent much of her career working with faculty to create learning experiences that invite curiosity, challenge assumptions, and help students see connections across ideas and disciplines. She has had the particular pleasure of collaborating with Rhona Trauvitch on FIU’s Science & Fiction initiative and its Sci Fi and Fi Sci projects, which bring together science, the humanities, imagination, and storytelling in ways that encourage both faculty and students to think differently. That work reflects Leanne’s broader interest in what happens when we create spaces for people to explore ideas across traditional boundaries—and makes her especially delighted to be moderating this conversation with Rhona tonight.