Previous workshops

2024

Text and Sound in Manuscript Cultures: Cognitive Approaches

The LCE Manuscript group's third workshop will take place on 18. October 2024.

Time and place: Oct. 18, 2024 9:00 AM, Niels Treschows hus, 12th floor

About the Workshop

Sound, silence and rhythm are key to our embodied interaction with the world around us, to our moving through space and perception of temporality. Attending to sounds and rhythms is fundamentally an embodied process, just as reading and writing. Reading and writing, in turn, are profoundly related to questions of sound and silence – think of the rhythm of a poem, the narrative pace of a story, the flow and interruptions of the reading process, practices of reading out loud or in silence, and, not least, fuzzy boundary between language and music.

While manuscripts, as any other written documents, are in themselves silent, the relationship between manuscript cultures and sound is complex and entangled with both the status and role of sound in a specific culture and with the manscript’s materiality and visuality. Traces of sound, silence and rhythm are abundant in manuscripts from all periods and cultures, from music annotation, visual clues on the manuscript page (or lack of these) that may suggest whether a manuscript was to be read aloud or silently, philosophical or theological reflections about the relation between thought, word and voice, to writers’ reflections about music or their use of it as a resource in the writing process, and composers’ creative use of texts.

The LCE Manuscript Group's hypothesis is that by studying sound (or its absence) in interaction with the materiality and visuality of manuscripts/manuscript cultures through the lens of 4E cognition, we can enhance our understanding of the interplay between written and oral culture, music and literature, rhythm and temporality, sound and space.

The invited and confirmed speaker this year is Professor of Classics Bissera Pentcheva (art.stanford.edu) from Stanford University. She has done important and amazing research on acoustics, art and music in Byzantine culture, and will speak about her latest work.

Call for papers

The LCE Manuscript Group invites papers discussing the interplay between sound (in the broadest sense), word and materiality in manuscripts from various periods and cultures, in connection to production (composing/writing) and performance, meaning making and interpretation. The deadline for abstracts is September 15th.

Click here to read the Call for Papers (pdf)

Location

Niels Treschows hus, 12th floor: 9-13h

Sophus Bugges hus, auditorium 1: 14-17h

Programme

9.00-9.15 Welcome

9.15-10.15 Bissera V. Pentcheva (Stanford University): Facing the Interpellating Gaze of the Lord: Conscience, Voice, and Tears

10.15-10.30 Coffee Break

10.30-11.00

Steffen Hope (UiO/IAKH): A soundscape evoked in parchment?

– Saint Edmunds (zoom)

11.00-11.30 Giulio Minniti (UiO/IAKH): Silence – Reading, Responding, Writing – Sound. Musical Life in Blank Manuscript Spaces

11.30-11.50 Coffee Break

11.50-12.20 Stefka G. Eriksen (UiO/ILN): The Soundtrack of Old Norse Texts and Ecology

12.20-12.50 Judith Irmela Haug, UiO/IMV: Voice, Ink, and Memory: The Workings of Ottoman Song Text Collections

12.50-14.00 Lunch (SV kantina) + Moving to Sophus Bugges hus

14.00-14.30 Cathrine Bothner-By (freelance) & Kristin Bech (UiO/ILOS): Introduction to Gregorian chants and mini-concert

14.30-15.00 Stijn Vervaet (UiO/ILOS): The Affordances of Sevdalinka Singing: Affect Regulation and Memory in Aleksandar Hemon’s and Damir Imamović’s The World and All that it Holds

15.05-15.30 Nanette Nielsen (UiO/IMV): ‘A Case of You’ as a Case of Me

15.30-15.50 Coffee Break

15.50-16.20 Kristina Socanski Celik (UiO/IMV): The Music of Arvo Pärt and Ljubica Marić: A Space of Engagement Between the Ancient and the Modern

16.20-16.50 Peter Edwards (UiO/IMV): Imagining Form and Capturing the Moment: The Musical Sketches of György Ligeti

16.50-17.00

Wrapping up

19.00 Dinner at Tekehtopa (workshop participants only)

Organizers

The event is organized by Stijn Vervaet and Stefka Georgieva Eriksen. If you are interested in joining the event, or have any questions, you can contact them at: stijn.vervaet@ilos.uio.no or s.g.eriksen@iln.uio.no.

2023

Corpus Group Workshop

12 December 2023, University of Oslo (UiO)

In the first part, group members shared progress reports on the continuous efforts with parallel corpora, followed by a guest lecture delivered by Amel Fraissé (Univ. of Lille/France). The subsequent part involved group discussions on the potential applications and modifications of the affect coding system employed in psychotherapy to analyze literary texts.

The conversation revolved around the following contributions:

• Amel Fraissé (Université de Lille): TransLiTex: A Parallel Corpus of Translated Literary Texts.
• Ole André Solbakken: Affect Integration and affect consciousness. Application possibilities to literature on the example of the “Falcon novella” in Boccaccio’s Decamerone (duo.uio.no)
• Beate Siebt: Affect phenomenology: Discrete emotions in therapy and literature
• Jon T. Monsen: Affect Integration and affect consciousness. Exercises.
• Stephan Guth: “Coding” of plot segments in Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Russian folktale

Participants: Stephan Guth, Jon T. Monsen, Beate Seibt and res.ass., Ole André Solbakken, Ljiljana Šarić, Gunvald Axner Ims, Karl Jonathan Jonsson, Åsne Lønne, Amel Fraissé (via Zoom)

Friendship and Intimacy in the Digital Age: An Optimistic Perspective

29 November 2023, Niels Treschows hus, HF-12

Stephen Asma will talk about friendship in the digital age, followed by a discussion. The workshop is organised in collaboration with the research group "Sense of Community".

Loneliness was on the rise well before COVID-19 increased isolation for many people. A decade ago, people reported that they had three or four strong friendships, but in more recent surveys it has dropped to two. And many now report that they have no close friends. Depression among 14–17-year-olds has gone up dramatically since 2009 suggesting a causal relation with the rise of social media culture. The promise of online life was greater connection, but the reality seems otherwise.

There is a rising “doom and gloom” narrative emerging about the future of human social bonds and there is indeed reason to worry. Now that AI chatbots and social robots are integrating into our daily lives, many people despair about the future of friendship and love.

In this workshop Dr. Stephen Asma will discuss the dangers of digital life for human social connection, but also assess the many underappreciated values of online friendship. He will include discussion of some of the latest social psychology and emotional neuroscience of human bonding.

Striking revelations from parasocial research suggest for example that we may forge meaningful “relationships” with non-reciprocating AI, robots, celebrities, inanimate objects, and other non-agents. Asma will discuss how (a) language-based remote interactions (e.g., texting, memes, email, video chat, etc.) and (b) imaginative ruminations (e.g., mind-wandering, literature, mythopoetic media, etc.) still provide the kinds of embodied interactions necessary for love and friendship to flourish.

Asma’s talk will be followed by a discussion where everyone is invited to participate. The discussion will start off from a previously distributed text. So, if you would like to participate in this workshop, please contact Mats Haraldsen to receive the text in question before the workshop.

About Stephen Asma

Stephen Asma is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, and co-founder of the Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture. 

He is author of ten books, including The Evolution of Imagination (University of Chicago Press), The Emotional Mind (Harvard University Press), On Monsters (Oxford University Press), as well as several books on Buddhism.

He has lectured at Harvard, Oxford, the Smithsonian, University of Chicago, Fudan University, and many more. He writes regularly for the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, and Aeon magazine.

Together with actor Paul Giamatti, Asma is the executive producer and co-host of the podcast “Chinwag” (treefort.fm). 

Asma has lived and taught in Phnom Penh (Cambodia), Beijing, and Shanghai (China).

As a musician Stephen has played live music with Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Bo Diddley, and many more blues and jazz artists. He has also been a part-time professional illustrator for several books, and an award winning plein air painter. 

Organizer

Literature, Cognition and Emotions (LCE) and Sense of Community (SOC)

Text and Image in Manuscript Cultures: Cognitive Approaches

Nov. 27, 2023 – Nov. 28, 2023, University of Oslo (UiO)

This workshop will explore the relationship between image and text in manuscripts from various periods and cultures, in connection to production and cognitive engineering, and meaning-making and interpretation.

The material turn in the philologies has made us aware that a main characteristic of manuscript culture is the book’s materiality and visuality. Such material and visual aspects may range from illuminations and drawings to colored, decorated or illuminated initials, from titles and rubrics to marginal annotations, remarks, doodles and scribbles, from various fonts, sizes and colors of the writing, to abbreviation signs and punctuation, among others. The relationship between image and text varies in manuscripts produced in different cultures and periods, but this interplay is always central and illustrative of both the production process and meaning-making reception of the text.

Questions under discussion include but are not limited to:
What are the cognitive affordances of creating and reading a multimodal text? What embodied aspects of cognition play a role in creating and reading multimodal texts and artworks? How can these processes be studied and described with the help of recent developments in cognitive theory, and how can they, vice versa, shed light on some basic tenets of cognitive science?

Invited Speakers

• Stephen Asma, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago
• Lukas Rösli, Professor of Old Norse philology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Program

Monday 27th Nov

• 12.00-12.15: Welcome and intro Stijn Vervaet and Stefka G. Eriksen

Session I: Keynote I (chair: Stijn Vervaet)

• 12.15-13.30: Stephen Asma, Columbia College Chicago
  Making Sense with Images and Stories: Imperative Representations

Session II: Cognitive traces of images (chair: Stefka G. Eriksen)

• 13.45-14.30: Karin Kukkonen, UiO
  Sketching on a Type-Writer: The Case of Cora Sandel
• 14.30-15.15: Stijn Vervaet, UiO
  Drawing as Thinking: Perception and Embodiment in Leonid Šejka’s Work

Session III: From manuscript culture to print (chair: Stijn Vervaet)

• 15.45-16.30: Ingrid Eskild, UiO
  Visual innovations in the popular-scientific journal al-Muqtataf (1876-1885)
• 16.30-17.15: Mats Haraldsen, UiO
  From memory palaces to comics: Tracing cognition from mind to paper

Tuesday 28th of Nov

• 9.00-10.00: Oslo Cathedral school, Ullevålsveien 31, Oslo
  Guided tour of the library by main librarian Ernst Bjerke.  

Session IV: Keynote II (chair: Stefka G. Eriksen)

• 10.30-11.45: Lukas Rösli, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  Why can I understand it even if I don't have the encryption key? Ciphered paratexts in Old Norse-Icelandic manuscripts and their reception.

Session V: Reading texts and images in medieval social spaces (chair: Stijn Vervaet)

• 13.00-13.45: Line C. Engh, UiO
  Reading with body and soul: The cognitive affordances of Hrabanus Maurus’ poems De laudibus sanctae crucis
• 13.45-14.30: Stefka G. Eriksen, UiO
  Translating visuality and textuality in medieval manuscripts: a case-study of the story about Yvain, the Knight of the Lion

Organizer

Literature, Cognition and Emotions (LCE)

• Stijn Vervaet
• Stefka Georgieva Eriksen 

LCE Workshop Imagination and Memory in Comics: Cognitive Approaches

14 September 2023, 9:00 AM - 5:30 PM, Room 300, Niels Henrik Abels hus

In this workshop, we aim to explore how creative imagination, memory, and embodied cognition work together and how these interactions could be studied through the medium of comics.

Our imagination, memory, and the ways in which we perceive, experience, and interact with the world are profoundly connected. Visual images are often perceived as central to imaginative processes and have been singled out as one of the reasons why memory and imagination are so densely entangled. Our thinking rarely stays on one track or in the confines of one modality, but memory and imagination, as well as verbal, visual, spatial, haptic, and bodily cognition constantly complement each other.

Since comics also involve the interplay of realistic and fantastical expressions, as well as visual and verbal elements, they offer an excellent entry point into examining these issues. Moreover, understanding cognition not as a computational, but as an embodied process offers new avenues to explore comics artists’ and readers’ bodily engagement with the material, experiential, and narrative aspects of graphic storytelling. We are interested in understanding both how the artists’ creative processes work and how the readers’ embodied cognition is involved in their engagement with comics.

Questions under discussion include

• What are the cognitive affordances of form and materiality in reading and creating comics?
• How do the cognitive affordances of writing and drawing, text and image differ from and complement each other?
• What embodied aspects of cognition play a role in the creative processes of making and reading a comic?
• How can these processes be studied with the help of recent developments in cognitive theory, and how can they, vice versa, shed light on some basic tenets of cognitive science?

Programme

• 9:15-9:30 Welcome (Essi & Stijn)
• 9:30-11:00 Session 1
  • Rebecca Suter: Flower and Dreams: emotive backgrounds and shared memory in Japanese girl comics
  • Rebecca Scherr: Drawing Ground in the Graphic Novel
  • Essi Varis: Line of Thought: Drawing as a Way of Thinking
• 11:30-13:00 Session 2
  • Stijn Vervaet: Imagination and Memory in Aleksandar Zograf's Work: On Dreams, Things, and the Cognitive Work of Comics
  • Mats Haraldsen: Imagining the Past of Others: (Post)memory and Comics
  • Álvaro Llose Sanz: A memory problem: Metaphors of forgetfulness in Paco Roca's "Wrinkles" (2007)
• Afternoon session
  • 14:15-15:15 Talk by Aleksandar Zograf: Creating Comics: Between the Observed and the Imagined (place: Scene HumSam)
  • 15:30-17:30 Comics salon

Participants

• Rebecca Suter, Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Oslo
• Rebecca Scherr, Professor of American Literature at the University of Oslo
• Essi Varis (orcid.org), Visiting researcher at LCE, University of Oslo, and Researcher at the University of Helsinki
• Stijn Vervaet, Associate Professor of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Balkan Studies at the University of Oslo
• Mats Haraldsen, PhD Candidate in French Literature at the University of Oslo
• Álvaro Llosa Sanz, Associate Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Oslo
• Aleksandar Zograf, Cartoonist
• Karin Kukkonen, Professor of Literature at the University of Oslo
• Ljiljana Šarić, Professor of Central European and Balcan Studies at the University of Oslo

The Workshop is arranged by

• Stijn Vervaet, Associate Professor of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Balkan Studies at the University of Oslo
• Essi Varis, Visiting researcher at LCE, University of Oslo, and Researcher at the University of Helsinki

There will also be a Conversation between Stijn Vervaet and Aleksandar Zograf at Deichmann Grünerløkka 15 September 7:00 - 9:00 PM. 

Corpus group workshop

28-29 August 2023, University of Oslo (UiO)

In this workshop, group members shared updates on the parallel corpus work. On day one, Diana Santos joined us as a guest, sharing insights into her research on emotions in language. She delved into the categories employed in Anna Wierzbicka's exploration of emotions across various languages and cultures.

The second part of the workshop covered discussions on topic modeling, examining emotions in older literary texts, metaphors, and potential coding systems applicable to our corpus. Ole André Solbakken introduced the methodology he and his colleagues utilize for coding affect in patient interviews.

Participants:  Stephan Guth, Ole André Solbakken, Ljiljana Šarić, Gunvald Axner Ims, Karl Jonathan Jonsson, Diana Santos

Affordances and Constraints of Imagination — Day I & II

28 August, 2:00–6:00 PM ; 29 August, 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM

This two-day workshop explores how different kinds of cognitive and textual resources and restrictions enable and extend imagination.

“The only limitation is your imagination!” is a cliché – a phrase for advertising environments, services and products that offer possibilities for creative action. Yet, this banality defies many common misconceptions linked to imagination, recognizing that it is not limitless and cannot create anything from nothing. Just like any other kind of cognition, imagining cannot escape everyday experience but is, in fact, deeply embedded in it – feeding from it and into it. Similarly, fictions and art forms can coax imagination to expand into different directions, but they also restrain it through the modes and habits of expression as well as the myths, tropes and clichés they make available or salient. In this two-day workshop, we explore the affordances – the action potentials and constraints – that literature and narrative provide for imagining.

Overall, the workshop is designed to encourage interdisciplinary discourse on the embodied, extended, embedded and enactive nature of imagination as well as to make the participants more aware of the imaginary strategies employed in research and literary discourse. How could we work past harmful limitations of imagination and expand our scopes of speculation? On the other hand: how could we encourage creativity and find new affordances by constraining imagination in more purposeful ways?

Programme

Day I

On the first day, the invited guest speakers present how the questions of affordance and imagination have come together in their research. The day will conclude with a roundtable discussion that the audience is also invited to participate in.

• Welcoming words by Essi Varis & Sarah Bro Trasmundi
• Julian Kiverstein: "The Sociomaterial Theory of Affordances"
• Karin Kukkonen: "Scrivere in altre parole: Language as the ultimate literary constraint"
• Hanna-Riikka Roine: "Imagining Democracy and Narrative Fiction"
• Riikka Rossi: "The Imagined North and Emotions"
• Kukkonen, Roine, Rossi, Trasmundi & Varis: Discussion on the Affordances and Constraints of Imagination

Day II

The second day comprises the more practical part of the workshop, as we conduct exercises inspired by the Oulipo tradition (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle). These exercises aim to demonstrate that constraints can also stimulate imagination, when employed mindfully.

• Short introduction to OuXpo & creative restrictions
• Practical Exercise I
• Practical Exercise II
• Concluding discussion

Participants

• Hanna-Riikka Roine (tuni.fi), Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Tampere University,
• Riikka Rossi (researchportal.helsinki.fi), Professor of Finnish literature at the University of Helsinki,
• Julian Kiverstein (illc.uva.nl), Assistant Professor of Neurophilosophy at the University of Amsterdam,
• Karin Kukkonen, Professor in Comparative literature and convener of LCE, University of Oslo.

The workshop is arranged by

• Sarah Bro Trasmundi, Researcher at LCE, University of Oslo, and Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark, and
• Essi Varis, Visiting researcher at LCE, University of Oslo, and Researcher at the University of Helsinki.

Literature as a way of knowing (I + II)

18 April 2023, 1:00 – 5:00 PM, HF-12, Niels Treschows hus – 19 April 2023, 9:15 AM – 12:00 PM, PAM 14, P.A. Munchs hus

A two-day workshop on literature, language, cognition, and ecology

This first day of the workshop will feature a lecture series. During this, the lecturers will present their current research into literature in its capacity as a mode of knowing and in its capacity as a modal ontology (the contested boundaries of fiction). Literature is a not just a set of texts but an embodied practice, an institution, an access to the real and medium for the production, dissemination and critique of ways of knowing, and indeed for the imaginative creation of reality itself.

We will consider literature from the point of view of modal ontology, in other words not-yet-being, from the point of view of cognitive ecology and ecological linguistics and from the point of view of knowing reality through reading. We claim that “literature” as a cultural practice is diversifying and democratising in an unparalleled way today, which upends familiar distinctions such as that between writer and reader, text and enjoyment, writing and speaking/listening. Which conceptualities are available to guide us through these changing parameters?
 
For the second day of the workshop, we conduct a small experiment: we will, as a group, close-read and interpret a story. We will film the process and conduct an analysis of the video material. What did we observe? Where are traces to be found of the ideas that we have presented? What does the process tell us about the place of literature in the contemporary sensorium?

Programme

Day one 

Lectures on Epistemology: literature as knowing & Ontology: literature and reality

• 13:00–14:00 — Johan Siebers: "Literature as Objective Fantasy"
• 14:00–15:00 — Paul Cobley: "Knowing reality through reading"
• 15:15–16:15 — Sune Vork Steffensen: "Cognitive ecology and ecological linguistics"
• 16:15–17:00 — General discussion   

Day two

Workshop: Close reading experiment

• 9:15–9:30 — Framing the close reading experiment
• 9:30–10:30 — Literature lab: close-reading of a story in groups, filming of the process (no preparation – the text will be handed out)
• 10:30–11:30 — Analysis of the video material produced in the previous session
• 11:30–12:00 — Wrapping up

Participants

• Paul Cobley is Professor in Language and Media at Middlesex University. His research interests include semiotics, close reading, narrative, and popular fiction. His books include Cultural Implications of Biosemiotics (2016), Narrative 2nd edn. (2014) and The American Thriller: Generic Innovation and Social Change in the 1970s (2000).
• Sune Vork Steffensen is Professor in Language, Interaction, and Cognition at the University of Southern Denmark, where he heads the university’s Centre for Human Interactivity (together with Sarah Bro Trasmundi), as well as Senior Fellow at the Danish Institute for Advanced Study. Focusing on how language and cognition intersect in complex social and dialogical systems in ways that transform social and ecological systems, his research draws on ecological, dialogical, and distributed approaches to language, interaction, and cognition. He has contributed to the development of Ecolinguistics and to the development of Cognitive Event Analysis. He has edited five books/special issues on ecological and distributed approaches to language and authored more than 50 articles/chapters in journals and books. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Language Sciences.
• Johan Siebers is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Middlesex University and director of the Ernst Bloch Centre for German Thought at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. His research interests include philosophy of language and communication, futurity and post-Kantian German thought, areas in which he has published widely. He is founding editor of Empedocles: European Journal for Philosophy of Communication and series editor of Routledge Research in Anticipation and Futures. Recent book publication: Working with Time in Qualitative Research: Case Studies, Theory and Practice (2022).

Manuscripts, Creativity, and Cognition

28 February 2023, 9:15 AM – 5:00 PM, HF-12, Niels Treschows hus

How do we approach the fluidity of manuscripts with cognitive theories? In this workshop, a range of speakers present new perspectives on variance and creativity in manuscripts.

The material turn in the philologies has made us aware that a main characteristic in manuscript cultures is variance in almost any aspect of a text, spanning from language and orthography to structure and content, as well as production and reception processes. Both in historically oriented disciplines (new philology) and in literary studies (genetic criticism), these insights have led to a reevaluation of the manuscript as a fluid text. Cognitive theory, on the other hand, reminds us that the mind is embedded, embodied, enactive and extended (4E cognition), giving us conceptual tools to link the materiality of a manuscript to the creative minds of the agents engaging in various types of writing and reading processes. In this workshop, we invite speakers to discuss textual and material variations in manuscripts, in connection to creativity and cognition.

Invited speakers

• Olga Anokhina, Researcher at l'Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes-ITEM, CNRS
• Dirk van Hulle, Professor of Bibliography and Modern Book History at the University of Oxford, and director of the Centre for Manuscript Genetics at the University of Antwerp

Speakers

• Alexandra Effe, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, UiO
• Stefka G. Eriksen, Research Professor at Norsk institutt for kulturminneforskning, NIKU
• Alpo Honkapohja, Postdoctoral Fellow in British-American at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, UiO
• Karin Kukkonen, Professor in Comparative literature, UiO
• Hugo Lundhaug, Professor of Biblical Reception and Early Christian Literature, UiO
• Mikael Males, Professor in Medieval Studies, UiO
• Stijn Vervaet, Associate Professor in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Balkan Studies, UiO
• Michelle Waldispühl, Associate Professor in German linguistics and language acquisition at the University of Gothenburg

Programme

• 9.15–11.00: I – Affordances and Constraints of Materiality
  • Dirk van Hulle – "Manuscripts and the Mind: Creativity across Versions and the Pentimenti Principle"
  • Karin Kukkonen – "Narrative Proportions: Size and Scale in Manuscripts"
  • Michelle Waldispühl – "Creativity in the usage of lists in medieval Libri vitae"
• 11.30–12.30: II – Function and Form
  • Hugo Lundhaug – "Adapting the Biblical Storyworld: The Role of Apocrypha in Coptic Egypt"
  • Mikael Males – "The Lexemic Theory versus Scribal Creativity: Is There a Middle Ground?"
• 13.30–15.30: III – Intra and Interlingual Translations
  • Olga Anokhina – "Creativity in multiple languages: the study of multilingual writers’ and translators’ drafts"
  • Stijn Vervaet – "Between Invention and Intention: The Poetic Visions and Revisions of Miloš Crnjanski"
  • Stefka G. Eriksen – "Creativity on the Oral-Written Continuum: A Survey of Old Norse manuscripts"
• 16.00–17.00: IV – Creativity and Crisis
  • Alpo Honkapohja – "Plague on the Page: Variance in Copies of the John of Burgundy Plague Tract in England from the 14th to the 17th Century"
  • Alexandra Effe - "Creative Writing as End-of-Life Therapy: Manuscript Revisions for Christine Brooke-Rose’s Life, End of (2006)"

2022

Embodiment Moving Ahead: The Second Generation in 2022

16 December 2022, 1:30 PM–6:00 PM, HF-12, Niels Treschows hus

Where does an embodied approach to narrative and literature stand today? In this LCE workshop, researchers working on empirical and theoretical aspects of bodies, minds and narrative will present their latest investigations.

In this workshop, LCE sets out to map some of the recent movements within the field of embodied and 4E approaches to literature. What new perspectives have emerged since cognitive literary studies made the move from first-generation computational to second-generation embodied approaches?

Programme

13:30: Presentations (I) – Chair: Marlene Andresen

• Marco Bernini – "Fictive Presences and Permanence: On Imaginative Permeability"
• Emily Troscianko – "Is it up to authors to make sure their books do more good than harm?"
• Discussion moderated by Marlene Andresen
• 15:30: Coffee Break

16:00: Presentations (II) – Chair: Essi Varis

• Marco Caracciolo – "Time, Space, and Embodied Complexity in Video Game Narrative"
• Karin Kukkonen – "Agency, Embodiment and Literary Games"
• Merja Polvinen – "Reasons to Be Cheerful"
• Discussion moderated by Essi Varis
• 17:00–18:00: Final discussion

Participants

Marco Bernini is Associate Professor in Cognitive Literary studies at Durham University

• Marco Caracciolo is Associate Professor of English and Literary Theory at the University of Ghent
• Karin Kukkonen is Professor in Comparative literature and the convener of Literature, Cognition and Emotions at the University of Oslo
• Merja Polvinen is Senior Lecturer in English Philology at The University of Helsinki
• Emily Troscianko is Research Associate at TORCH – The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities at the University of Oxford 

Moderators

• Essi Varis is Researcher at the University of Helsinki and Visiting Researcher at Literature, Cognition and Emotions (UiO)
• Marlene Andresen is Doctoral Research Fellow in Comparative literature at the University of Oslo

Connected events

Triple Book Launch: New Embodied Approaches to Narrative

15 December 2022, 4:15–6:30 PM

Organizer

Literature, Cognition and Emotions

LCE Writing Workshop: Academic Writing Demystified

29 November 2022, 10:00 AM–2:00 PM, HF-12, Niels Treschows hus

This workshop aims to demystify an essential part of academic study and research: the writing process. The final products of academic writing are apparent in the form of academic papers, books and articles, but the complex processes behind them tend to remain hidden from view. We will discuss different approaches to academic writing, as well as specific techniques that can help make the academic writing process easier and more enjoyable.

The workshop will be led by Julie Hansen, Associate Professor of Slavic Languages at the Department of Modern Languages, Uppsala University, and Alexandra Effe, Postdoctoral Fellow at ILOS, UiO. We will also hear from a recent M.A. graduate and engage in concrete writing activities, so bring pen and paper, or a computer, and thoughts about a project you are currently working on.

The workshop will be particularly helpful for M.A. students working on a thesis related to literature.

Concept Workshop: Speculation

What does speculation mean?

25 May 2022, 2:00 – 4:00 PM, Realfagsbibliotekets undervisningsrom 209 & Zoom

Welcome to a speculative concept workshop organized by the editors of Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research (journal.finfar.org).

In this two-hour workshop, we will discuss the concept of 'speculation' and aim to (re)define it in a way that would make it a useful analytical tool for science fiction and fantasy scholars.

This workshop will be held at The University of Oslo in a hybrid format.

What does speculation mean?

Welcome to a speculative concept workshop organized by the editors of Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research!  

Although 'speculative fiction' has recently gained popularity as the new umbrella term for fantastic fiction, 'speculation' itself remains an ambiguous, even obscure concept. Within science fiction studies, 'speculation' is usually defined either in opposition to or as something of a synonym for 'extrapolation' (see Landon 2014). In more general literary and narrative studies, readers' engagement with the possible (and the impossible) has mostly been studied in relation to plot and narration, even though fleshing out storyworlds and characters requires speculative thought as well. All in all, speculation is something that we do in a wide array of contexts when something seems uncertain: It is a cognitive or artistic strategy that functions somewhere beyond knowing and actualization.

In this workshop, we discuss possible ways to pin this nebulous concept down. To guide the discussion, we invite the participants to read some materials in advance. In addition, we have invited colleagues from different theoretical backgrounds to give short presentations on how they (would) approach the concept of speculation. The workshop then culminates in general discussion, which aims to arrive at a comprehensive definition of 'speculation' in the framework of literary and/or SFF scholarship.

The result will be submitted to the Finnish online research dictionary, Tieteen termipankki. In addition, we invite the workshop participants to distill the main points of the discussion into a co-written dialogical essay. This will be published as part of Fafnir 2/2022 in a special theme section called "Speculation Toolkit". The essay will not be peer-reviewed, and participating in the workshop does not obligate anyone to participate in the writing process. 

The workshop is organized at the University of Oslo in a hybrid format, and will therefore be open for digital participation via Zoom (external link).

Programme

14:00 – 14.50: Different perspectives on speculation (10 minutes each)

• Hanna-Riikka Roine: Speculation as a Strategy
• Essi Varis: Speculation and Imagination as Cognitive Action
• Sarah Bro Trasmundi: Embodied Perspective on Speculation
• Elise Kraatila: Speculation as a Response to Reality
• Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay: Speculation and Compossible Futures

15:00 – 16:00: General discussion and redefining the definition (30 minutes each)

Materials

We recommend the following texts as preparatory background reading:

• Landon (2014). "Extrapolation and Speculation." in The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction, edited by Rob Latham, pp. 24–35. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Roine (2020). "On Speculation as a Strategy". Fafnir 7:2, pp. 8–15.
• Varis (2022). "Strange Tools and Dark Materials: Speculation Beyond Narratives with Philosophical Instruments" in Partial Answers 20:2 (forthcoming) [Pages 254–262 — "Speculative Fiction: What Is It and What Does It Do?"]
• Chattopadhyay (2020). "The Pandemic That Was Always Here, and Afterward: from Futures to CoFutures" in "Thinking through the Pandemic: A Symposium" in Science Fiction Studies  47:3 (November 2020), pp. 338–340.

Welcome to the workshop!

If you have any questions, please contact Hanna-Riikka Roine (hanna.roine@tuni.fi) or Essi Varis (essi.varis@helsinki.fi).

Participants

• Fafnir is an open access, World Fantasy Award winning academic journal published by the Finnish Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy Research (Finfar).
• Hanna-Riikka Roine is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow from Tampere University.
• Essi Varis is a Postdoctoral Researcher from The University of Helsinki currently visiting The University of Oslo.
• Sarah Bro Trasmundi is a Researcher from The University of Oslo and lecturer at The University of Southern Denmark.
• Elise Kraatila is a recent Doctoral Graduate from Tampere University.
• Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay is an Associate Professor at The University of Oslo. 

Organizer

Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research and Literature, Cognition and Emotions (LCE)

Book Hack: Extended reading - extended listening? 

Workshop for MA students with an interest in literature.

22 March 2022, 10:00 am -13:30 pm.

Can you say you read a book when you listened to its audio version? What does voice add to print and paper? And are the habits of audiobook-listeners different from paper-readers?

In this workshop, we will look at the embodied nature of the printed book as physical artefact - and at the same time challenge the dominant focus on print reading within literary studies - by addressing the audiobook as crucial contemporary literary medium.

In the first part of the workshop, we investigate what print literature can do thanks to its materiality and mediality; what we as readers do with literature that we encounter in such an ‘embodied’ form. We look at hands-on material some examples of contemporary multimodal literature that foregrounds the book´s materiality, as well as examples of real readers´ habits of  ‘extending’ a printed book by adding bookmarks, notes, etc. in the process of reading. 

In the second part, the notion of the book´s physical nature will be challenged - even the notion of  'reading' in itself. We do this by looking closer at - or rather listening closer to? - audiobooks as literary media. The particular affordances of print versus audiobooks will be mapped out by discussing their respective (un)intended purposes, their media-specific forms of usage and potentials to engage their readers. One of the main questions will be if and how we might find ways to ‘extend’ an audiobook similar to how we do it in case of printed books. Tackling this question will give another hands-on opportunity to ‘hack’ the book as a diverse medium within our digital age.

Organizer 

Natalia Igl and Signe Marie Brandsæter

2021

LCE Master Study Group 07.December

The LCE Master Study Group  is an offer for master students who want to exchange thoughts, ideas, and literary experiences with fellow students.

The group is associated with LCE. We discuss issues and topics related to literature, reading and the mind. The meetings are for open discussion around the topics of your thesis to motivate and inspire one another. Everything that has to do with literature, cognition and emotions is welcome at the study group.

Next meeting will be held December 07 at 11.00 AM, PAM seminarrom 2.

We will read the introduction of Rita Felski's “The Limits of Critique” and discuss how one can apply post-criticism as a theory and method in the analysis of texts. What is “post” in post-critique? How is it different from "ordinary" and traditional criticism?

Please contact Oda Norén should you wish to join: odakn@student.ilos.uio.no

LCE Writing Workshop 

15 November 2021 (10 am – 2 pm) at NT 12th floor.

During a 4-hour workshop, we will explore questions related to writing in an academic context. How important is style and how do I judge it? What is my academic voice? Which tools can help me become a better and more productive writer? How do I overcome writer's block? 

We will hear from recent graduates and engage in concrete writing activities, so bring pen and paper, or a computer, and thoughts about a project you are currently working on. 

The workshop will be particularly helpful for M.A. students working on a thesis related to literature. 

Organizer

Alexandra Effe

LCE Master Study Group

The LCE Study Group  is an offer for master students who  want to exchange thoughts, ideas, and literary experiences with fellow students.

The group is associated with LCE (Literature, Cognition and Emotion). We will discuss issues and topics related to literature, reading and the mind. The meetings are planned for open discussion around the topics of your thesis to motivate and inspire one another. Everything that has to do with literature, cognition and emotions is welcome at the study group. 

We will read and discuss texts based on our shared interest. During the semester, we also plan to invite teachers to attend the meetings for further inspiration and discussion. 

The first meeting will be held October 20 at 16.00 PM., PAM seminarrom 3.

Please contact Oda Norén should you wish to join: odakn@student.ilos.uio.no

2020

POSTPONED Moments and Modes of Self-Reflexivity

This workshop explores readerly engagement with self-reflexive texts. Approaching the experience of the reader from an interdisciplinary perspective at the intersection of literary studies and cognitive science, we address the following questions:

• What are modes of self-reflexivity and how can we measure them?
• What does (an experience of) self-reflexivity look like?
• Which kinds of texts constitute such a mode of writing and elicit such modes of reading?
• Are particular narrative strategies particularly prone to eliciting such modes?
• How do we experience metanarrative and metafictional texts? How are embodied and conceptual dimensions of reading interlinked?
• How do texts “write their readers” (Birke 2016) by commenting on production and reception within the text?
• What is the role of a text’s materiality, and of the medial conditions of its production and reception (from early printing to the digital age)?

Organizer

Alexandra Effe

LCE network for MA students: Meetings in spring 2020

The LCE MA student-network welcomes MA students with an interest in literature and cognition. See below for a list of dates and information on how to participate.

The LCE MA student-network provides a place to discuss subjects related to literature, cognition and emotions and meet other students who share the same interests. This spring the LCE MA student-network is meeting at the following times:

• 24.02.2020, 14:00-16:00
• 09.03.2020, 14:00-16:00
• 23.03.2020, 14:00-16:00 CANCELLED
• 30.03.2020, 14:00-16:00 CANCELLED
• 20.04.2020, 14:00-16:00 CANCELLED

To attend to these meetings or to find out more about the network, please contact Andrea Dale Wefring.

2019

Two LCE workshops for MA students this autumn

This autumn, LCE organises a writing workshop, as well as a book-hack exploring literature and new digital formats, for MA students.

What happens when literature moves from paper to the screen? Join us for a one-day book hack to explore the relationship between literature and new digital formats. The event will take place on 1 November. 

In the writing workshop, we introduce different writing techniques, tools and styles together with journalist and poet Kristina Leganger Iversen. The event will take place on 25 November. 

Becoming Attached – Attachment’s Role in Literary Studies

Time and place: Sep. 17, 2019 10:00 AM–4:00 PM, Georg Sverdrups hus, seminarrom 2

Attachment may be taken as a synonym for love, liking, affiliation, and has recently been launched as a keyword for the humanities and for literary studies (Felski, 2008, 2015). In psychology, however, attachment is a more complex form of human relationship involving both cognitive and emotional development, and physical survival (Bowlby, 1979).

This workshop raises questions about how, and to what extent it makes sense to think of attachment as a form of aesthetic judgment, as a way of thinking how readers and writers engage with literature, and what literature possibly can teach us about the making and breaking of affectional bonds. Against this backdrop, the workshop looks into attachment’s role in literature, and literature’s role in attachment, and encourages inquiries into the meaning of the term attachment, and how it has been and might be used in relation to literary studies.

Everybody is welcome!

Programme

10:15 Welcome & Introduction

Session 1

Moderator: Camilla Chams, Research Fellow in Comparative Literature, University of Oslo

10:30 Kay Young: ”We were together. I forget the rest: Attachment Theory and Literature”

11:00 Christian Refsum: Attachment and Vulnerability in Karl Ove Knausgård’s Spring

11:30 Hans Petter Blad: A Writer’s Attachment to his Own Work

12:00-13:00 Lunch

Session 2

Moderator: Karin Kukkonen, Professor in Comparative Literature, University of Oslo

13:00 Camilla Chams: What’s Writing Got to Do with It?

13:30 Karine Porpino Viana: Development of the Representations of the Mother-Child Attachment Relationship in Western Literature from 1945-2018

14:00 Benjamin Yazdan: Experience and Attachment in Tone Hødnebø’s poetry

14:30-15:00 Coffee

Session 3

Moderator: Kay Young, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Santa Barbara

15:00–16:00 Discussion

This workshop has been organized in conjunction with the midway PhD assessment for Camilla Chams in the Department of Literature, Area Studies, and European Languages (ILOS) at the University of Oslo.

Participants

• Kay Young is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a founding member and former director of the Literature and Mind Program at UCSB.
• Christian Refsum is Professor in Comparative Literature in the Department of Literature, Area Studies, and European Languages (ILOS) at the University of Oslo, and a founding member of the research group Travelling Texts.
• Hans Petter Blad is a Norwegian novelist, poet and playwright.
• Karin Kukkonen is Professor in Comparative Literature in the Department of Literature, Area Studies, and European Languages (ILOS) at the University of Oslo, and the convenor of the research and educations initiative, Literature, Cognition and Emotions (LCE).
• Camilla Chams is a Research Fellow in Comparative Literature in the Department of Literature, Area Studies, and European Languages (ILOS) at the University of Oslo, and a member of the research group Literature, Cognition, and Emotions (LCE).
• Karine Porpino Viana is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology at the University of Oslo, and a member of the research group Emotion Understanding in Children across Cultures.
• Benjamin Yazdan is a Film- and Literary critic for Klassekampen and BLA, and holds a Master in Comparative Literature from the University of Oslo.

Organizer

Camilla Chams

LCE network for MA students

A new LCE network for MA students is starting up in January 2020.

Monday January 27, 2pm in PAM seminar room 7

Are you an MA student in literature, psychology or linguistics with an interest in the connections between literature, cognition and emotions? We are starting an MA network in connection with LCE (Literature, Cognition and Emotions).

 This is an opportunity to get to know each other and brainstorm about what kind of activities we want, for instance a reading group, writing sessions, etc. Suggestions for topics/articles we can discuss in future meetings are welcome! We do not expect any specific previous knowledge as this is an interdisciplinary network open to students from various programs. The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies (available online) is a good place to start for those who want an introduction to the field.

Get in touch with Andrea Wefring if you want to attend the first meeting, receive information about upcoming activities or have any questions/suggestions.