How does literature express, shape and reflect human thoughts and feelings? These questions have given rise to a new research field.
LCE research themes
Emotions across Cultures and Languages
Literature, in many respects, draws on the particular in its linguistic and cultural embeddedness while, at the same time, it is thought to evoke the «big» emotions that all people share. Research connected to this trajectory investigates these tensions, as well as the relations between emotion, affect, mood and feeling as states of emotional involvedness.
Cultural and Cognitive Memory
The stories that we tell about ourselves are crucial for the ways in which we remember experiences and construct our private and social identities. Memory’s temporal dynamics goes hand in hand with these stories, as the literary imagination comes to inform personal templates of the self and as processes of social cognition shape cultural memory.
Literature as a Lifeworld Technology
As the twenty-first century lifeworld changes toward digitization, the question arises whether deep literary reading is still a cognitive process connected to literature on screen, what are the cognitive effects of digital, shallow forms of reading and whether teaching more literature might offer a countermeasure.
Guest researcher programme
The LCE guest researcher programme brings internationally leading scholars to Oslo. In addition, LCE members visit collaborating universities for research stays.
Workshops
The workshops serve as a venue to work together on concepts, texts and theories across different disciplines. We will publish information on the workshops continuously.