Dear readers,
In Oslo, the autumn semester is in full swing: The reading group is back in action, we are recording the next podcast season, and on 21 September, Stefan Collini will hold our Annual Lecture for 2022. In this newsletter you will find all the lastest from LCE, plus more information on the Annual Lecture and the seminar on interdisciplinarity which is organised in connection with it. We hope to see many of you on 21 September!
Best wishes,
Karin. |
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Stefan Collini – ‘Beauty and the footnote: the place of “literature” as an academic discipline’ |
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| Time and place: 21 September 2022, 4:15–5:45 PM, HF-12, Niels Treschows hus
In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, universities expanded to include a wide range of what came to be regarded as academic ‘disciplines’. The study of literature was eventually to become one of the biggest and most popular of these subjects, yet it was in some ways an awkward fit: not obviously susceptible to the ‘scientific’ treatment considered the hallmark of a scholarly discipline, it aroused a kind of existential commitment in many of those who taught and studied it. This lecture explores some of the ways in which these tensions worked themselves out in the last two hundred years, focusing on the peculiar prominence, but also instability, of high-toned justifications offered for this form of study. In so doing, it touches on larger questions about the changing character of universities, the peculiar cultural standing of ‘literature’, and the conflicting social expectations that societies have entertained towards higher education and specialized scholarship.
Collini's lecture was postponed from 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Stefan Collini is Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and English Literature at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of, among other books, Public Moralists (1991), Matthew Arnold: a Critical Portrait (1994), English Pasts: Essays in History and Culture (1999), Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain (2006), Common Reading: Critics, Historians, Publics (2008), Common Writing: Literary Culture and Public Debate (2016), and, most recently, The Nostalgic Imagination: History in English Criticism (2019). He is also a frequent contributor to The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Nation, and other publications. In addition, he has contributed to international debates about higher education, principally through his 2012 book What Are Universities For? and its sequel Speaking of Universities (2017).
To add the event to your calendar, please visit the event page on our website.
The Annual Lecture is accompanied by a seminar on Interdisciplinarity in Literary Studies, a Reading Group session and an outreach event titled The Death of Literary Criticism? in collaboration with Litteratur på Blå, which are also presented in this newsletter. |
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Panel discussion: Interdisciplinarity in Literary Studies |
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From the left: Stefan Collini, Mathilde Skoie, Christian Benne, Karin Kukkonen, Bruno Laeng & Sarah Bro Trasmundi. Photos: Ruth Morse, UiO, KU, UiO, UiO, UiO
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Time and place: 21 September 2022, 1:15–3:45 PM, HF-12, Niels Treschows hus
Working between and across disciplines is a common expectation in today's university. What does interdisciplinarity look like in the day-to-day activities of scholars? What frameworks do we have to make it happen? And what can be the role of literary studies in a research world that constantly asks scholars to go beyond the boundaries of their disciplines? In connexion with the LCE Annual Lecture, LCE invites to a panel discussion on these matters. The panel consists of - Christian Benne, Professor of German and European literature and intellectual history (the University of Copenhagen, KU)
- Karin Kukkonen, Professor in Comparative Literature and Convener of LCE (UiO)
- Bruno Laeng, Professor in Cognitive Neuropsychology (UiO)
- and Mathilde Skoie, Professor in Latin (UiO).
- Response by Stefan Collini, Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and English Literature at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of the British Academy.
The discussion will be moderated by Sarah Bro Trasmundi, Researcher at LCE (UiO) and Lecturer (the University of Southern Denmark, SDU). To add the event to your calendar, please visit the event page on our website. |
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Reading Group with Stefan Collini |
The LCE Reading Group discusses “The Two Cultures” |
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Time: 22 September 2022, 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 |
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Litteratur på Blå: “The Death of Literary Criticism?” |
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Time and place: 20 September 2022, 7:00 PM, BLÅ, Brenneriveien 9C, 0182 Oslo
Is literary criticism dead? In collaboration with Literature, Cognition and Emotions and the LCE Annual Lecture 2022, Litteratur på Blå organizes a conversation on the state of literary criticism between Stefan Collini and Margunn Vikingstad. -
Stefan Collini is Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and English Literature at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of the British Academy.
- Margunn Vikingstad is a norwegian literary critic in Morgenbladet, writer, and literary translator.
The conversation will be moderated by Karin Kukkonen, LCE Convener and Professor in Comparative literature at The University of Oslo (UiO). The doors open at 7:00, and the conversation begins 7:30. This event has an entrance fee of NOK 50,-.
For more information on the event, please visit Litteratur på Blå's website or the event page on Facebook. |
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New Digital Teaching materials |
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Material Reading and Conceptual Blending |
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Photo: Still from Igl's Material Reading. Produced by LINK. |
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Natalia Igl and Ljiljana Šarić present two new videos for LCE's digital teaching materials catalogue.
In Material Reading, Igl explains how we encounter texts as embodied and embedded artefacts, and how we therefore also read with our bodies. Saric's Conceptual Blending is narrated by David Burke, and explains how new meaning arises when we combine different mental spaces through conceptual blending.
To see LCE's new Digital Teaching materials, as well as explore our catalogue of older material, please visit our website. |
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Karin Kukkonen elected to Academia Europeana |
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In June 2022, Karin Kukkonen was elected into the Academia Europeana (Academy of Europe) as a member of Class A1 – Humanities.
For more on this, please visit Academia Europeana's website. |
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Yasemin Hacıoğlu and Thinking through Poems |
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Yasemin Nurcan Hacıoğlu, Associate Professor in English at the University of Stavanger and LCE affiliated Researcher, presented research linked to her doctoral dissertation Thinking through Poems: Composition and Decision-Making in Late Eighteenth-Century Women’s Novels, which she defended in September 2021 at the University of Oslo.
Hacıoğlu presented on “Fictional Females and Feminist Fabrications: Literature, History, and Art” at the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities. She also contributed an exhibition text to a library exhibition on Russian-Ukrainian author and cultural icon from the Napoleonic wars, Aleksandr Aleksandrov (1783–1866, born Nadezhda Durova), at St Catherine’s College, Oxford.
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Conversations on how literature shapes our thoughts and feelings |
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The Literature, Cognition and Emotions Podcast season two was published over the summer and is now available in its entirety. In this season, LCE members and affiliates were invited by Stijn Vervaet, the host for season two, to join him in the studio and discuss how their research relates to LCE’s research themes.
We would like to thank the LCE members and affiliates — Alexandra Effe, Natalia Igl, Olivia Da Costa Fialho, Yasemin Nurcan Hacıoğlu, and Karin Kukkonen — who were so kind as to accept our invitation to share their research in the LCE podcast series, as well as Stijn Vervaet, for hosting the conversations. The two LCE Podcast seasons are available on both Spotify, iTunes and on our website. |
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LCE Podcast season 2: All episodes |
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Natalia Igl Associate Professor in German-language literature and culture (hiof) |
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Alexandra Effe Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages (UiO) |
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Olivia Fialho Postdoctoral Researcher at the Huyghens-ING/KNAW and Lecturer of Comparative Literature at Utrecht University |
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| Reiko Abe Auestad Professor of Japan Studies
Auestad, Reiko Abe. “Verdenslitteratur gjennom ‘kognitiv historisisme’: Shishôsetsu (jeg-litteratur) som narrativt eksperiment.” In Janicke S. Kaasa and Marius W. Haugen (ed.), Agora 2–3, 2022 |
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| Halvor Eifring Professor of China Studies
Eifring, Halvor (red.). “Skapende sinn: Elleve forfattere om å meditere og å skrive”. Dyade 1/2022 Eifring, Halvor. “The Global Ethics of Emotions: What Ancient Chinese Philosophies Can Teach Us” in Diogenes, 2022 DOI: 10.1177/0392192h1t2tp2s1:/0/d8o0i.8o1rg4/ |
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| Stefka Eriksen
Research Professor – Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research Eriksen, Stefka. “Readings in Times of Crisis: New Interpretations of Stories about the Settlement of Iceland” in Scandinavian Studies 94, 2, 2022, pp. 143–173 |
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| Natalia Igl Associate Professor in German-language literature and culture (hiof)
Igl, Natalia. “Making Sense of the Material: Multisensory Reader Involvement in Contemporary Multimodal Novels,” in Art Style, Art & Culture International Magazine, vol. 10, no. 10 (September 2022): 71–85 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7020556 |
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| Karin Kukkonen Professor of Comparative Literature
Kukkonen, Karin. “The Experience of Narrative: Aesthetics and Embodiment.” in Dawson, Paul & Mäkelä, Maria (Ed.), Routledge Companion to Narrative Theory. Routledge, pp. 397–408 ISSN 978-0-367-56973-0 |
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