No. 9 — March 2023

Dear all,

LCE has gotten off to a flying start in 2023 with new projects, publications and presentations. 

And season 3 of our podcast has finished its launch as of today with the final episode on Thomas Schubert’s research on “being moved”. You can listen to all episodes from the season, featuring Sarah Bro Trasmundi, Stefka Eriksen, Hugo Lundhaug, Tone Selboe and Silvio Bär, on our website and other platforms. In this newsletter we also take you behind the scenes and share some finds in the podcast statistics across all three seasons.

Our method groups “Manuscripts” and “Corpus” get briefly introduced below. If you are working with these methods, don’t hesitate to visit the groups’ websites and get in touch.

As we are (still) waiting for spring here in Oslo, we send best wishes to all readers,
Karin Kukkonen

Photo: Unsplash / Max Tcvetkov

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, from the materiality of its production to the sociology of its reception. 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. 

Bringing together scholars from different backgrounds, with expertise in different periods, languages, and genres, this group meets regularly to discuss textual and material variations in manuscripts, in connection to creativity and cognition. 

Read more about the Manuscript Group here. 

Participants

• Stefka Eriksen, Research Professor at Norsk institutt for kulturminneforskning, NIKU
• Stijn Vervaet, Associate Professor in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Balkan Studies, UiO
• Karin Kukkonen, Professor in Comparative literature, UiO
• Alexandra Effe, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, UiO
• Hugo Lundhaug, Professor of Biblical Reception and Early Christian Literature, UiO
• Alpo Honkapohja, Postdoctoral Fellow in British-American at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, UiO

Photo: Stephan Guth

The Corpus Group’s main aim is the compilation of a corpus of literary texts translated from/into several languages and investigating cognitive and emotional processes as they are represented in text and across translations.

The group focuses on collecting data and compiling a corpus of literary texts translated from/into several languages, with the aim of investigating cognitive and emotional processes as they are represented in text and across translations.

The group's data presently include Turkish and Arabic originals translated into English, as well as Norwegian originals translated into Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Turkish, Arabic, and English.

Read more about the Corpus Group here.

Participants

• Ljiljana Šarić, Professor of South Slavic linguistics at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages (ILOS)
• Ole André Solbakken, Professor in Psychology at the Department of Psychology (UiO)
• Stephan Guth, Professor of Middle East Studies at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS)

Affect, Emotion and Sensibility in Modern Japanese Novels

Inspired by new developments in cognitive literary theory and neuroscience, Reiko Abe Austead's book project explores a new fruitful way of combining cognitive approaches with more established close-reading methods.

In this project, Auestad works with a selection of Japanese novels by nine authors — Natsume Sôseki, Shiga Naoya, Ôe Kenzaburô, Ibuse Masuji, Kirino Natsuo, Kawakami Mieko, Murata Sayaka, Tsushima Yûko and Ishimure Michiko — stretching from the early twentieth century to the present day.

To read more about the research project, please visit LCE's website.

• Reiko Abe Auestad is Professor in Japan Studies at the Univerisity of Oslo

Affect phenomenology: Discrete emotions in therapy and literature

Therapists and authors know human feelings intimately, but in different ways. How can clinical insights into emotions help us understand emotional passages in literature? And do these, in turn, relate to emotional struggles we see in therapy?

Working with both interviews and literary analysis, the project seeks to explore how literary texts reflect the ways in which different emotions are experienced and expressed in life — and how eliciting factors might change over time. 

To read more about the research project, please visit LCE's website.

Participants

• Beate Seibt is Professor in Social Psychology at the University of Oslo
• Ole André Solbakken is Professor in Psychology at the University of Oslo
• Jon Trygve Monsen is Professor in Clinical Psychology at the University of Oslo

Conversations on how literature shapes our thoughts and feelings

Photo: Colourbox

The third season of the Literature, Cognition and Emotions Podcast has now been launched in its entirety, and all episodes are available for streaming. Below you find a detailed list of all episodes.

Today, we launch the final episode of the LCE Podcast season 3 — and this is a good opportunity to look into the statistics behind the “plays” across different platforms and share some of our finds with you — our listeners. 

The first episode aired on 14 December 2020, and since then, the podcast has clocked in no less than 9 hours, 29 minutes and 39 seconds of conversation, covering a diverse range of subjects under the LCE research themes. 

Episodes from seasons 1, 2, and 3, have so far been played no less than 2311 times total. Though most listeners live in Norway, the episodes have reached listeners throughout Europe, America, Asia and Australia. Most of you listen on Apple Podcasts, some prefer Spotify, and a small handful listen through the LCE website. The website seems to be the most challenging platform for listening, as only around 30 percent of listeners reach the end of the episode. In comparison, Spotify especially seems to make listening easy, helping an average of 70 percent of listeners reach the last LCE jingle. 

Thank you very much for pressing the play button. 

If you missed any of the previous episodes of the LCE Podcast, you can find them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and on the LCE website.