Reading Group

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: "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

2022 Sessions

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:

• 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
• Davis, Lydia. (2013). "From below, as a neighbor" in The collected stories of Lydia Davis. London: Penguin, pp. XXII, 733
• Munro, Alice. (2012) "Voices" in Dear Life. London: Chatto & Windus, p. 319
• 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: "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