We welcome new participants. If you are a researcher at postdoctoral level or working towards a doctorate, please contact Karin Kukkonen to join the reading group.
Upcoming Sessions
Reading Group: Stefka Eriksen
7 May, 2:15 PM
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen: karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Njal’s Saga – Session 1/2
12 June, 2:45 PM
Over two sessions, we will discuss Njal’s Saga. This is perhaps the best-known Icelandic saga, and it tells a dramatic and violent story, featuring a rich set of characters. Njal's Saga deals with love, friendship, but also politics and vengeance.
For this session we will read:
- Njal’s Saga. Translated by Robert Cook. Penguin, 2006.
For those that want to read it in Norwegian, we recommend:
- Njåls saga. Translated by Jon Gunnar Jørgensen. Torleif Dahls Kulturbibliotek, 2018
To read more about this Reading Group, please visit the event page.
Reading Njal’s Saga – Session 2/2
21 August, 2:45 PM
Over two sessions, we will discuss Njal’s Saga. This is perhaps the best-known Icelandic saga, and it tells a dramatic and violent story, featuring a rich set of characters. Njal's Saga deals with love, friendship, but also politics and vengeance.
For this session we will read:
- Njal’s Saga. Translated by Robert Cook. Penguin, 2006.
For those that want to read it in Norwegian, we recommend:
- Njåls saga. Translated by Jon Gunnar Jørgensen. Torleif Dahls Kulturbibliotek, 2018
To read more about this Reading Group, please visit the event page.
2024 Sessions
Reading Group: Beate Seibt
9 April, 2:15 PM
In this session, we discuss Beate Seibt's article draft "What are Emotions about? The Need-Affect Theory of Emotions", as she lays out an integrative emotion theory bridging constructionist, basic emotion, and appraisal approaches.
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen: karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group: Andrea Talmann
8 February, 2:15 PM
In this reading group, Andrea Talmann will present her ongoing research on the concept of ‘empathic space’.
We will be reading an article draft by Andrea Talmann on “Empathic Space in Henry James’s short story ‘The Jolly Corner’”.
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen: karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Special Reading Group: The Artificial Silk Girl
1 February, 2:45 PM - 4:15
In this session, we discuss Irmgard Keun’s novel The Artificial Silk Girl. In the novel, Keun tells of the ambitions and the hardships of a young woman trying to make her way in the Berlin of the "Roaring" 1920s.
For this session we will read:
- Keun, Irmgard. The Artificial Silk Girl. Translated by Kathie von Ankum. Penguin, 2019
To read more about this reading group, please visit the event page.
2023 Sessions
Reading Group: Moral Truth
22 November, 2.15 PM
In this Reading Group, Jasmin Richter and Rolf Reber present their work on "Moral Truth" with an article draft. The discussion will address their research on the questions of whether moral judgments have truth-value.
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen: karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Special Reading Group: Reading Yukiko's Spinach
17 November, 2:45 PM - 4:15 PM
In this session, we will discuss Frédéric Boilet’s manga Yukiko’s Spinach. As part of the “Nouvelle Manga” movement, Boilet here blends Japanese manga with the French/Belgian comic tradition. Set in Tokyo, Boilet draws on both story-telling traditions to tell a visually beautiful love story of the meeting between Boilet’s fictional alter ego and the Japanese woman Yukiko. This session will be led by Rebecca Suter, Associate Professor of Japanese at IKOS.
For this session, we will read:
- Boilet, Frédéric. Yukiko’s Spinach. Translated by Stephen Albert. Fanfare/Ponent Mon, 2006.
Reading Group: Creativity and Contingency in Literary Writing
27 October, 2.15 PM
In this Reading Group, we will discuss work in progress by Karin Kukkonen from her LCE project "Creativity and Contingency in Literary Writing". We read the introduction of her book manuscript, where she outlines her approach to creativity. The introduction builds on a case study of two writers (Elsa Morante and Italo Calvino) to introduce her methods and approach, highlighting practice, contingency and form as the key terms.
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen: karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Special Reading Group: Reading 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' — Session 2/2
Time: 4 October, 2:45 – 4:15 PM
For the third set of sessions of this new exploratory reading group, we will discuss Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? through perspectives from different fields. The Reading Group will be held on Zoom and is led by Essi Varis. This is session two of two.
In this session, we will read and discuss one of the most iconic science fiction novels of all time, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick. The novel has inspired numerous imitations and adaptations across media, including the Blade Runner films. The novel is also an excellent introduction to the literary genre of science fiction and the strategies and devices it has for exploring what it means to be human. This session will be led by Essi Varis, who is a postdoctoral scholarship researcher at the University of Helsinki, a visiting scholar at Oslo's LCE project, and a current editor-in-chief of Fafnir — Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research.
For this session, we will read
- Chapters 12–22 (pages 103–193) in Dick, Phillip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. London: Gollancz, 2010
Reading Group with Alexandra Effe
Time: 20 September, 2:15 PM
- Developments in Autofictional Genre Signals
- Autofictional Books in Times of Digital Self-Performance and Alternative Facts
Special Reading Group: Reading 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' — Session 1/2
Time: 7 September, 2:45 – 4:15 PM
For the third set of sessions of this new exploratory reading group, we will discuss Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? through perspectives from different fields. The Reading Group will be held on Zoom and is led by Essi Varis. This is session one of two.
In this and the coming session, we will read and discuss one of the most iconic science fiction novels of all time, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick. The novel has inspired numerous imitations and adaptations across media, including the Blade Runner films. The novel is also an excellent introduction to the literary genre of science fiction and the strategies and devices it has for exploring what it means to be human. This session will be led by Essi Varis, who is a postdoctoral scholarship researcher at the University of Helsinki, a visiting scholar at Oslo's LCE project, and a current editor-in-chief of Fafnir — Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research.
For this session, we will read
- Chapters 1–11 (pages 1–102) in Dick, Phillip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. London: Gollancz, 2010
Reading Group with Regina Fabry
Time: 23 August, 2:15 PM
In this Reading Group, Visiting Researcher Regina Fabry will present her work on autobiographical memory, narrative and self-understanding.
Bringing together research in philosophy of mind, the cognitive sciences, and narratology, she explores the conditions under which not only autobiographical memories, but also self-narratives can be distributed across the brain, the rest of the body, and the local environment.
Reading material
- Fabry, Regina. "Distributed autobiographical memories, distributed self-narratives" in Mind & Language, 2023, pp. 1–18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12453
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen:
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Special Reading Group: Reading 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' — Session II
Time: 21 June, 2:45 – 4:15 PM
In this second session, the exploratory reading group will read and discuss the second half of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. This session will also be led by Juan Toro, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). This is session two of two.
For this session, we will read:
- Pages 166–last in Márquez, Gabriel García. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Translated by Gregory Rabassa. London: Penguin Books, 2014
Reading Group with Reiko Abe Auestad: Natsume Sôseki’s Narrative Experiments
Time: 22 May, 2:15 PM
In this Reading Group, we will discuss one chapter from Auestad’s coming book. What sort of social, cultural, and linguistic challenges did Japanese authors in the Meiji period (1868–1912) face in their encounter with this foreign form called the ‘modern novel’? With some of Natsume Sôseki’s well-known works as examples, this chapter examines the historical conditions governing the cognitive environment that shaped their writerly sensibility to better appreciate the hybrid and experimental nature of their literary oeuvre.
We will read the first of the two chapters in Part I of Auestad’s book project under contract. Under the rubrics of genre, affect and trauma, the book addresses themes related to genre experiments and sensibility at the turn of the 20th century (Part I) and representation of affect, emotion, and trauma in a selection of modern Japanese novels (Part II and III), nine chapters altogether.
Reading Material
- Reiko Auestad’s manuscript, Chapter One: “Natsume Sôseki’s Narrative Experiments: From Shaseibun (‘sketch from life prose’) to Light and Dark (1916)”
- The Table of Content as a reference. A tentative draft of the introduction is available on request for those who are interested.
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen:
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Special Reading Group: Reading 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' — Session I
Time: 3 May, 2:45 – 4:15 PM
In this and the coming session, the exploratory reading group will read and discuss the first half of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. This session will be led by Juan Toro, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). This is session one of two.
For this session, we will read:
- Pages 1–166 in Márquez, Gabriel García. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Translated by Gregory Rabassa. London: Penguin Books, 2014
Reading Group with Essi Varis: Authors' Descriptions of Literary Imagination
Time: 26 April, 12:15 PM
Literary imagination still holds many mysteries that reserachers of various fields are struggling to uncover, and in this quest, the metacognitive insights of the practitioners remain an underutilized resource. Authors of fiction in general – and authors of science fiction and fantasy in particular – spend a lot of time and energy utilizing and cultivating their imaginary faculties. What is more, their creative, figurative use of language provides them with unique means of describing these processes.
In this reading group session, we discuss Varis' article manuscript, which analyses the metaphors that a range of speculative fiction writers – Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Ursula Le Guin, Philip Pullman, and Ray Bradbury – have attributed to imagination in their non-fiction essays.
Reading Material
- Varis' article manuscript: "An Exploding Garden Beats the Opposable Thumb: Taking Seriously the Metaphoric Expressions Speculative Fiction Authors Attribute to Imagination"
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen:
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group with Merja Polvinen: Suspense and the Re-Reading of (Science) Fictions
Time: 21 April, 2:15 PM
Suspense is one of the emotions Meir Sternberg (1978) identifies as specific to narrative form. But what happens to suspense in re-reading?
In this reading group we will think about re-reading and about how knowledge of the future affects readers’ embodied engagement with narrative. If we already know how the story will turn out, how do we still care about what happens? Cognitive literary studies have presented many ideas about whether we experience suspense on a second reading or not, and these models reveal interestingly different assumptions about how our minds engage with fictions.
In addition to the theory and mainstream literary examples, we will discuss how science fiction, in particular, “literalises” narrative temporalities. Bringing in your own examples is very welcome!
Reading Material
- Chapter 4.2 “Self-Reflective Knowledge and Narrative Emotions in Ted Chiang’s ‘Story of Your Life’” in Polvinen’s recent monograph Self-Reflective Fiction and 4E Cognition, 2022 (pp. 90-92, 102-119).
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen:
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Special Reading Group: Reading Conversations in Sicily – session I–II
Time: 9 March, 2:45 PM and 22 March, 2:45 PM
Mats Haraldsen and Sarah Bro Trasmundi are starting an exploratory reading group, where we read a mix of stories and academic texts, starting with Conversations in Sicily. The aim is to discuss readings that we have wanted to read for some time or simply read a text again and discuss it with people coming from completely different fields. No specific field expertise is required to join.
People can join as they please – and should not feel obliged to attend every time or for all readings of a text. However, let us know prior to each session if you plan on attending, by contacting mats.haraldsen@ilos.uio.no or s.b.trasmundi@ilos.uio.no.
In the first meetings of the new exploratory reading group, we will discuss Elio Vittorini’s Conversations in Sicily through perspectives from different fields.
Session I: Reading material
- For this session, we read chapters I–XVI in Vittorini, Elio. Conversations in Sicily. Trans. Alane Salierno Mason. Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd, 2004
Session II: Reading material
- For this session, we read chapters XVII–end in Vittorini, Elio. Conversations in Sicily. Trans. Alane Salierno Mason. Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd, 2004.
Reading Group with Ylva Østby Berger: Nostalgia Study
Time: 8 March, 2.15 PM
Nostalgia features heavily in many literary works. Once a medical diagnosis, its brain mechanisms were studied by Napoleon’s military surgeon, among others. Now, the neural correlates of nostalgia has once again caught researcher’s interest. In Selin Sahpazoglu’s MA project in cognitive neuroscience, she investigates EEG correlates of both trait and state nostalgia. Østby Berger presents the preliminary results, along with some results from the ReadMemo study, featuring nostalgia and mindfulness.
Reading Material
- Yang, Ziyan, Tim Wildschut, Keise Izuma, Ruolei Gu, Yu L.L. Luo, Huajian Cai & Constantine Sedikides. "Patterns of brain activity associated with nostalgia: a social-cognitive neuroscience perspective" in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2022 (17): pp. 1131–44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsac036
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen:
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
2022 Sessions
Reading Group with Anna Abraham: Narratives and the creative ideation process
Time: 24 November, 2:15 PM
In this Reading Group session, we will discuss two texts that explore two very different planes of the creative ideation process. Abraham’s text makes a case for how the situatedness of the creative act is essential to the creative process, and postulates that this explains the vulnerabilities associated with literary creativity. Fletcher’s text points to how our natural capacity for narratives and verbal expression can be co-opted to enhance our capacity for creative ideation beyond the literary domain.
Reading Material
- Abraham, A. (2022). "Creativity or creativities? Why context matters." Design Studies, 78: 101060. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2021.101060
- Fletcher, A. & Benveniste, M. (2022). "A new method for training creativity: narrative as an alternative to divergent thinking." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1512: 29–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14763
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen:
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group with Anne Duprat: Narrative trompe-l'œil
Time: 21 November, 2:15 PM
In this Reading Group session, we discuss the material of one of the chapters in progress of the essay Newstalgia, which Anne Duprat is currently writing, about the role literature plays in the perception, acceptance and/or anticipation of the new.
Using three examples of narrative trompe-l'œil, taken from different literary genres (epic poem, love letter, detective story), we will look at how literature constructs a cognitive illusion through a manipulation of the speed of the narrative, and enquire into the effects produced by this illusion.
Reading Material
- Duprat, Anne. “Fear, Time and Literature” in Kaisa Kaukiainen & al. (eds.): Fear and Safety: Affective Spaces in European Literature, Arts and Cinema, Tampere University Press, 2020
- Excerpts from
- Homer, Iliad XVIII, vv. 478–617
- Paris, Barbin. Lettres Portugaises (1669) [Letters of a Portuguese Nun, «Third Letter»].
- Poe, E. A. The Purloined Letter. The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1844)
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen:
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Special Reading Group: Reading 'Live Artefacts' — Session III
Time: 8 November, 4:00 PM
LCE welcomes its members and all interested PhD students to a series of special Reading Group sessions focusing on Professor Emeritus and Honorary Doctor Terence Cave's brand new book Live Artefacts: Literature in a Cognitive Environment (2022, Oxford University Press). The e-book version is available through Oria.
In this last session, we will be joined by Dr. Terence Cave and conclude the Reading Group by addressing the titular chapter 9 – "Live Artefacts", as well as any other thoughts and questions anyone might still have about the entire book.
Special Reading Group: Reading 'Live Artefacts' — Session II
Time: 1 November, 4:00 PM
LCE welcomes its members and all interested PhD students to a series of special Reading Group sessions focusing on Professor Emeritus and Honorary Doctor Terence Cave's brand new book Live Artefacts: Literature in a Cognitive Environment (2022, Oxford University Press). The e-book version is available through Oria.
In this session we will discuss
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Chapter 8 – "Proust's Protozoa".
Reading Group: "Ann Radcliffe: Instructing the Imagination" with Yasemin Hacioglu
Time: 27 October, 2:15 PM
In this reading group session, we engage with a distributed cognition perspective on Ann Radcliffe's gothic romances. Radcliffe's heroine is seemingly on the cusp of piecing together clues of patriarchal villains behind mysterious scenarios, but then she typically loses the thread of her thoughts and senses—indeed often fainting altogether.
The book chapter draft to be discussed in the reading group, presents a reading of how, alongside the cognitive failures, Radcliffe's protagonists use art and poetry composition to imaginatively comprehend plot situations, and to create new decisions for how to respond to them.
Reading Material
A chapter from a monograph proposal by Hacioglu titled "Ann Radcliffe: Instructing the Imagination".
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen:
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Special Reading Group: Reading 'Live Artefacts' — Session I
Time: 25 October, 4:00 PM
LCE welcomes its members and all interested PhD students to a series of special Reading Group sessions focusing on Professor Emeritus and Honorary Doctor Terence Cave's brand new book Live Artefacts: Literature in a Cognitive Environment (2022, Oxford University Press). The e-book version is available through Oria.
In this session we will discuss
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Chapter 1 – "Literary Artefacts: Orpheus' Head"
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Chapter 2 – "Artefacts, Affordances, Constructions"
Reading Group with Lilla Margyari
Time: 19 October, 12.15 PM
In this Reading Group session, we will discuss four texts, two excerpts from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and two excerpts from George Eliot's Middlemarch. All the chosen excerpts include dialogues. Margyari is interested in the distribution of embodied cues, such as 1) embodied movements and embodied posture and 2) bodily states and bodily experiences surrounding dialogues. We will discuss the following questions: when are embodied cues presented in scenes with verbal interactions – before, after or during dialogues? How do embodied cues relate to the description of the character's emotional and cognitive reactions? And what is the function of embodied cues in relation to dialogic events?
Magyari’s work on the qualitative analysis of embodied cues and dialogues is a collaborative study with Prof. Karin Kukkonen in the framework of the MSCA project What do we learn from dialogues in fiction? (FictDial), which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska Curie grant agreement No. 845343. The project aims to better understand why dialogues are frequently used in literary fiction, how dialogues are processed and how these facilitate social learning of adults and adolescents by modelling real-life social interactions.
Reading Material
Four excerpts from Jane Eyre and Middlemarch.
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen:
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group: Empirical approaches to emotional effects of poetic language with Eugen Wassiliwizky
Time: 11 October, 10:15 AM
In this reading group session, we will discuss how traditional approaches to literature can be extended by empirical work. The latter includes methods from psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and linguistics.
Empirical approaches to aesthetic phenomena have found their way into the mainstream of the cognitive neurosciences and experimental psychology over the last two decades. Importantly, this work does not aim to replace traditional humanist disciplines, but to approach aesthetic phenomena in a way that is governed by principles of naturalistic sciences, such as reproducibility of outcomes and reliance on statistical regularities. In many instances, it also relies on the long standing and rich humanist tradition and philosophical theory on aesthetic phenomena. In this session, we will discuss a specific example that aims to bridge distances and to facilitate collaboration between scientists, artists, and humanist scholars.
Reading Material
Wassiliwizky, E., & Menninghaus, W. (2021). Why and How Should Cognitive Science Care about Aesthetics? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(6), 437–449. (Open Access)
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen:
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group: "The Two Cultures" with Stefan Collini
Time: 22 September, 09.15 AM
This reading group is arranged in connexion with the LCE Annual Lecture. We will discuss the classical "Two Cultures" debate together with Stefan Collini.
The "Two Cultures" debate goes back to a lecture by the scientist and novelist C.P. Snow. Snow observed that while everyone in the Western world tends to have a basic cultural knowledge, knowledge about science tends to be confined to those that have studied it. In his example, everyone will have heard of Shakespeare but not everyone knows the second thermo-dynamic principle.
Snow held his lecture in 1959. Does his observation still apply? Are the two cultures still separate? And has science literacy overtaken cultural literacy?
Reading material
Collini, Stefan. "Introduction" in F.R. Leavis, Two Cultures? The Significance of C.P. Snow. Cambridge: CUP, 2013. pp. 1–51
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen:
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group: Mats Haraldsen on collective remembering in Lydie Salvayre's Cry, Mother Spain.
Time: 5 September, 14.15 PM
Mats Haraldsen is Master in both French and Comparative Literature and a Doctoral Researcher at UiO. Through the lens of second-generation cognitive science and memory studies, his research project investigates extended memory processes in novels by Georges Perec, Lydie Salvayre and Kamel Daoud.
We read "Making Sense of the Past Together. Collaborative Remembering in Cry, Mother Spain", an article draft by Mats Haraldsen.
To participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen:
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group: Ana Margarida Abrantes on voice descriptions and emotional cues in narrative.
Time: 22 August, 14.15 PM
Voice is a polysemous word that can stand for a grammatical mood, narrating instance and angle, an actual sound produced and perceived or the phenomenological account of inner speech. In narratology, voice has been studied along with perspective as categories that ascertain who speaks vs. who sees and thus help establish the position of the narrating instance with respect to that is narrated.
However, voice can be the topic of the narrative itself: a text can describe voice cues and how characters perceive and emotionally respond to these voices. Also, expressive voice descriptions in literature may trigger similar emotional responses to those obtained in actual discourse. This encourages further research in the field of audionarratology, particularly in how audiobooks and print narratives are received and emotionally processed.
In this session of the reading group, Abrantes will sketch out and discuss possibilities of research on voice in narrative. Drawing on work on audionarratology and multimodality, we will discuss the narratives by Davis, Munro and Weiss and how these could be studied regarding how voice cues are construed so as to engender an aural way of worldmaking and induce an emotional response.
Reading material:
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Brück et al. (2014). "'Inner voices': The cerebral representation of emotional voice cues described in literary texts." in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9 (11), pp. 1819–1827
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Davis, Lydia. (2013). "From below, as a neighbor" in The collected stories of Lydia Davis. London: Penguin, pp. XXII, 733
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Munro, Alice. (2012) "Voices" in Dear Life. London: Chatto & Windus, p. 319
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Weiss, Peter. (1964). Der Schatten des Körpers des Kutschers. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 38–47
If you wish to participate in this Reading Group, please contact Karin Kukkonen:
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group: Víctor Bermúdez on anticipation and rhythm in poetry
Time: 17 June, 14.15 PM
In this reading group, Víctor Bermúdez will introduce his work on anticipation and rhythm in poetry, and we will discuss a selection of poetry prepared by Víctor Bermúdez.
The reading materials can be found here (pdf).
If you would like to participate in the reading group, please get in touch with Karin Kukkonen.
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group: Material engagement in meaning-making
Time: 25 May, 11.00 AM.
This session will be led by Sarah Bro Trasmundi. We will discuss two texts, "Mark Making and Human Becoming" by Lambros Malafouris and "Tolle lege. Embodied reading and the 'scene of reading'" by Christian Benne. While coming from different disciplines, both authors investigate how our thinking and sense-making are constrained by the materiality of things — and how reading is to be considered as an embodied, active engagement rather than symbolic decoding.
If you are interested in participating, please contact Sarah Bro Trasmundi
sarahbt@uio.no
Reading Group: Embodied imagination and reading
Time: 03 March, 11.00 AM.
In this session, Sarah Bro Trasmundi will introduce her work on imagination, embodiment and reading. She will present some of the challenges and opportunities a qualitative approach to reading entails for an embodied program in the cognitive sciences and discuss how her background in cognitive ethnography can help illuminate some of the processes involved in imaginative reading.
If you are interested in participating, please contact Karin Kukkonen
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group (Online) : Imagination and Creativity
Time: 27 January, 12.00 PM.
This session will be led by our visiting researcher Essi Varis. We discuss two texts, "Extrapolation and Speculation" by Brooks Landon and "Fantasy and Imagination" by Patti M. Valkenburg and Peter Jochen. These texts approach creative imagination through the readers´ cognitive activities and through a fantastic text´s speculative nature.
The meeting will be held on Zoom.
If you are interested in participating, please contact Karin Kukkonen.
karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
2021 Sessions
Reading Group: "Mind-wandering and creativity"
Time: 01 December, 2.15 PM.
The reading group will discuss issues of mind-wandering in relation to creativity with a classic from psychology: Sigmund Freud, "Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming" and a take on creativity from researchers who specialize on mind-wandering Baird et al., "Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation".
If you are interested in participating, please contact Karin Kukkonen karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group: "The Talent of the Distributed Author"
Time: 03 November, 1.15 PM.
LCE Reading Group reads Slava and Milos Rankovic´s article "The Talent of the Distributed Author", continuing the discussion of creativity and constraints with respect to collaborative modes of authorship.
If you are interested in participating, please contact Karin Kukkonen karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group: "Creativity from Constraints?"
Time: 13 October, 2.15 PM.
The LCE Reading Group continues with an article by Patricia Stokes "Creativity from Constraints? What Can we Learn from Motherwell? From Mondrian? From Klee?" along with literary texts from George Perec and Christine Brooke-Rose.
If you are interested in participating, please contact Karin Kukkonen karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group: Mihaly Csikszentmihaly's concept of flow
Time: 20 September, 2:15 PM.
The LCE reading group discusses Mihaly Csikszentmihaly's concept of flow and its relation to creativity and literary writing. We will discuss a chapter from Mihaly Csikszentmihaly's Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.
If you are interested in participating, please contact Karin Kukkonen karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group: "Why One Story and Not Another?"
Time: 1 September, 2.15 PM.
The LCE Reading Group meets to discuss recent contributions to cognitive literary study, new developments in psychology and philosophy, and their relationship to the theory and practice of literary study.
This autumn LCE´s Reading Group will begin with an essay by Siri Hustvedt, "Why One Story and Not Another?" from the collection "A woman Looking at Men Looking at Women" (Simon and Shuster, 2014).
If you are interested in participating, please contact Karin Kukkonen karin.kukkonen@ilos.uio.no
Reading Group with Yasemin Nurcan Hacioglu
Time: 9 June, 01:00 PM
In the last meeting before the summer, the Reading Group will read and discuss a draft of an article by Yasemin Nurcan Hacioglu, along with the short story "The Sulphur Spring" by nineteenth-century writer Nadezhda Durova.
The Extended Mind and Memory
Time: 26 May, 01:00 PM
The Reading Group will discuss an article by the philosopher Richard Heersmink, "The Narrative Self, Distributed Memory, and Evocative Objects" (2018).
The Embodied Reader
Time: 5 May, 01:00 PM
The reading group will continue its discussion on Karin Kukkonen's Probability Designs (2020). For this session, we will focus on the second section of the book, "The Embodied Reader."
Probability Designs
Time: 15 April, 01:00 PM
The reading group will discuss the introductory chapters of Karin Kukkonen's book Probability Designs (2020). Access the book in Oria.
Writing as Thinking
Time: 10 March, 12:15 PM
The reading group will discuss how cognition and writing are interrelated. We will read two pieces with the same title, "Writing as Thinking", by Richard Menary (2007) and Keith Oatley and Maja Djikic (2008).
The Mind - Extended or Scaffolded?
Time: 17 February, 12:15 PM
The reading group will continue its discussion on the joint evolution of human cognition and culture. We will look into the debate on the extended mind: Clark and Chalmers' 1998 article "The Extended Mind" and Kim Sterelny's "The Scaffolded mind."
The Co-Evolution of Culture and Human Cognition
Time: 27 January, 1:00 PM–2:30 PM
We start the new year with discussing Andrea Bender's "The Role of Culture and Evolution for Human Cognition" and Michael Muthukrishna and Joseph Henrich's short article "A Problem in Theory".
2020 Sessions
Phenomenology and Speculative Realism
Time: 16 December, 1:00 PM–3:00 PM
We end our autumn sessions on phenomenology with a chapter from Tom Sparrow's The End of Phenomenology and sections from Peter Gratton's book Speculative Realism.
Reading Group with Karina van Dalen-Oskam
4 November, 1:00 PM–3:00 PM
Karina van Dalen-Oskam visits the Reading Group to discuss texts about literary novels and reader roles.
Edmund Husserl
Time: 14 October, 1:00 PM–3:00 PM
The reading group will discuss sections from Edmund Husserl's Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1913), and a chapter from Olivia Fialho's Transformative Reading.
Simone de Beauvoir with Gunnhild Øyehaug
Time: 15 September, 1:15 PM–3:00 PM
Author Gunnhild Øyehaug will visit the Reading Group the day before her talk with LCE at Forskningsdagene. Together, we will read and discuss Simone de Beauvoir's "Literature and Metaphysics", where de Beauvoir reflects on her practice as a writer from a philosophical, and perhaps phenomenological point of view.
Heidegger on Encountering the World
Time: 2 September, 1:00 PM–3:00 PM
Professor Michael Wheeler from University of Stirling will join the Reading Group to discuss why Heidegger is important for embodied, embedded, extended and enactive perspectives on cognition. We will look at sections from Heidegger's Being and Time, along with Wheeler's "Martin Heidegger" from Stanford Encycploedia of Philosophy.
Reading Group on Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and Cézanne’s Doubt
Time: August 19, 2020, 1:00 PM–3:00 PM
The Reading Group returns for the autumn semester to discuss the preface to Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and his article Cézanne’s Doubt.
Reading Group on the book manuscript With Bodies
Time: June 17, 2020 3:00 PM
LCE will discuss embodied cognition and narratology through a chapter from Marco Caracciolo and Karin Kukkonen's book "With Bodies: Narrative Theory and Embodied Cognition".
Reading Group on Lev Vygotsky’s Psychology of Art
Time: May 20, 2020 3:00 PM–4:00 PM
The reading group continues its discussion of Lev Vygotsky’s criticism of the ground-breaking article “Art as Technique” by the Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky.
Reading Group with Alan Fiske
Time: May 12, 2020 3:00 PM–5:00 PM
Alan Fiske, Professor of Anthropology at the UCLA, visits the LCE reading group.
Alan Fiske is interested in how humans coordinate often cooperative, complex, culturally and historically varying systems of social relations. His current research focuses on the feeling of being moved or touched (what is referred to as Kama Muta)
Reading Group on Lev Vygotsky’s Psychology of Art
Time: May 6, 2020 3:15 PM–4:00 PM
On 6 May, the LCE reading group had a second meeting on Lev Vygotsky to discuss a chapter from Psychology of Art.
CANCELLED: Reading Group with Stefan Collini
Time: May 6, 2020
On 5 May, the reading group is visited by the speaker of the LCE Annual Lecture; Stefan Collini..
Reading Group on Lev Vygotsky’s Thought and Language
Time: Apr. 22, 2020 3:15 PM–4:00 PM
On 22 April, the LCE reading group discuss a chapter from Lev Vygotsky’s Thought and Language.
Reading Group with Angelos Chaniotis
Time: Feb. 14, 2020 2:15 PM–4:00 PM
The LCE reading group discuss an article by Angelos Chaniotis entitled “Rituals between Norms and Emotions: Rituals as Shared Experience and Memory”.
Reading Group with Stephan Guth
Time: Jan. 24, 2020 2:15 PM–4:00 PM
2019 Sessions
Reading Group with the Affective Sciences Group on Lisa Feldman Barrett's How Emotions are Made
Time: Dec. 10, 2019 2:15 PM–4:00 PM
Reading Group with Tone Selboe
Time: Nov. 19, 2019 2:15 PM–4:00 PM
Reading Group on Lisa Feldman Barrett's How Emotions are Made
Time: Oct. 30, 2019 12:15 PM–2:00 PM
Reading Group with Barbara Dancygier
Time: Oct. 16, 2019 2:15 PM–4:00 PM
LCE will discuss simile as a figurative tool with Barbara Dancygier.
Reading Group with Jens Brockmeier
Time: Oct. 2, 2019 12:00 PM–1:00 PM
Reading Group with Sue Lovell
Time: Sep. 20, 2019 12:15 PM–2:00 PM
Reading Group with Sibylle Baumbach
Time: Sep. 19, 2019 1:15 PM–3:00 PM
Reading group with Johanna Kaakinen
Time: Sep. 11, 2019 1:15 PM–3:00 PM
Reading group with Winfried Menninghaus
Time: Sep. 5, 2019 1:00 PM–3:00 PM
Reading group with Merja Polvinen
Time: Aug. 23, 2019 2:15 PM–4:00 PM
Reading Group with Nicolas Bullot
Time: June 14, 2019 2:00 PM–4:00 PM
Reading Group with Paul Harris
Time: June 7, 2019 2:00 PM–4:00 PM
Reading Group on Vera Tobin's Elements of Surprise
Time: Feb. 15, 2019 2:15 PM–4:00 PM
Reading Group on Vera Tobin's Elements of Surprise
Time: Feb. 1, 2019 12:15 PM–2:00 PM