Neuro Humanities Studies

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REAL, IMAGINED, AND DISPLAYED FRAGILITY VULNERABLE POSITIONS AND POSITIONING IN SOCIETY

Warsaw, October 22nd – 24th, 2020 

CFP Deadline:  1st June 2020

Further information about the deadline

http://vulnerability2020.uw.edu.pl/

A research network at the University of Warsaw, University of Bremen, Åbo Akademi University (in Åbo/Turku) and Stockholm University address questions of social positions and positioning in a conference series on contradictory discourses of marginality and demarginalizations.

Social positions and positioning stand in connection to linguistic practices of stance taking and staging, of making oneself heard. Questions of marginal or central membership in groups and mechanisms of belongings have a high significance in constituting voices of actors in emerging discourses.

In these processes of positioning in the sense of stance taking and/or staging, contradictory discursive figurations become visible, which often represent a challenge for modern democratic societies.

The goal of the conference series is to reach an understanding of contemporary discourses shaped by contradictory configurations through in-depth analysis. The conference series is also associated with the section Discourses on Centrality and Marginality – Discourse Linguistic Agendas in Times of Contradiction at the XIV. Congress of the International Association for Germanic Studies in Palermo, Italy (IVG 2020), and the European Research Network on Discourses of Marginality and Demarginalizations.

Bremen-Turku-Warsaw-Stockholm Series on Studies in Discourse and Contradiction BTWS Series 2018–2021 | #3

October 22.-24. 10. 2020 in Warsaw, Poland

BTWS#3 focuses on positions and positioning of vulnerability in emerging discourses and in conversational exchanges. Vulnerability theories are grounded in the deep changes of the human ecologies of our societies and in the sense of precarity and inequality that individuals feel in relation to mainstream groups and institutions.

The concept of vulnerability opens up a series of infinite possible conjugations: victimization, fragility, weakness, disadvantage, being neglected, infantilized, ignored, excluded, and silenced. This leads to a series of (self-)presentation mechanisms at all levels that conference participants are called upon to describe in a wide range of manifestations: among them physical vulnerability, psychological vulnerability, social vulnerability, sexual and gender vulnerability, linguistic vulnerability, institutional vulnerability, verbal aggression.

Starting from these observations, we are interested in theoretical and empirical research that analyses contradictory discourses based on vulnerability positions and positioning. These positions can be expressed in agendas, arenas, and agencies.

The organisers approach these topics from an interdisciplinary linguistic perspective and wish to invite researchers from all disciplines to contribute to disciplinary and interdisciplinary discussions.

Publications of the NHS Research Centre

 Renata Gambino, Grazia Pulvirenti

 Storie Menti Mondi. Approccio Neuroermeneutico alla letteratura
 Stories Minds Worlds. A neurohermeneutic approach to literature

Mimesis, 2018

More information about the book (in Italian)

Read an excerpt of the book (in Italian)

Through the creation of stories and fiction, the human being organizes the experience of himself and the world, his own biological and imaginary experience, his own identity. And sometimes he is inspired by beauty in the stylistic-symbolic configuration of the literary text and in its fruition. In Storie Menti Mondi, literary experience is investigated as a dynamic, physiological, emotional and cognitive phenomenon, in relation to the mental processes which generate the proprium of every artistic creation and reconfigure it in the act of reading. Starting from the linguistic, formal, stylistic and symbolic specificities of a work, neurohermeneutics allows to interpret the text as an anthropological research device, as a privileged space for a reflection on the physical, emotional and cognitive processes implied by the imagination both in the creative act and in the aesthetic fruition. From this approach, which takes into account the interaction between hermeneutics, literary anthropology, studies on cognition, embodied simulation, empathy and the neural correlates of aesthetic experience, it is possible to open new critical perspectives on the exegesis of the text, as well as in relation to the culture in which each work is inscribed, and offer new insights into the processes of the mind engaged in the creative imagination and the fruition of stories: infinite worlds, which condense and resurface from the pages, through which the human being tries to build new meanings for his being in the world, in an exhaustible tension towards beauty.

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 Renata Gambino, Grazia Pulvirenti

 La mente narrative di Heinrich von Kleist
 The narrative mind of Heinrich von Kleist

Mimesis, 2018

More information about the book (in Italian)

Read an excerpt of the book (in Italian)

The Romantic totality is shattered in the thought of Heinrich von Kleist. For him, language collides with the consciousness of the subject, the act of thinking and acting through words. This expresses an epistemic project that concerns knowledge acquired through the poetic power of language and narration, and not through speculation. The investigation that characterizes the Kleistian work can therefore be considered as a reconnaissance of the human mind, characterized by a narrative process of experimentation with reality.

 

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Special Issues in the Gestalt Theory Journal

What is What? Focus on Transdisciplinary Concepts and Terminology in Neuroaesthetics, Cognition and Poetics
Was ist Was?

Transdisziplinäre Konzepte und Terminologien in Neuro-Ästhetik, Kognition und Poetik.

Guest Editors: Renata Gambino, Grazia Pulvirenti, Elisabetta Vinci.

Richard Teschner’s puppet theatre

We are pleased to announce the publication of the volume Nello specchio delle meraviglie. Il teatro di figura di Richard Teschner (In the mirror of wonders. Richard Teschner’s puppet theatre) by dott. Elisabetta Vinci, member of the NewHums Research Group.

The puppet theatre of Richard Teschner, a Bohemian artist who worked in the first half of the 20th century between Prague and Vienna, is different from any other example of theatre of the time. Thanks to a mixture of techniques and themes, deriving from eastern and western practice, and a coexistence of tradition and innovation, Teschner created a highly refined Gesamtkunstwerk.

[Elisabetta Vinci, Nello specchio delle meraviglie. Il teatro di figura di Richard Teschner, Mimesis, Milano 2019.]

Further information about the book can be retrieved at this link

Weltkultur 2019

 

Give a look at the program!
Weltkultur Program

Summer School “Pathos. Forms and fortunes of literary emotions”, taking place on August 27-30th, 2019 in the amazing setting of Monopoli, Italy.

Plenary talks by Karin Kukkonen, Françoise Lavocat and Paolo Giovannetti.

We will work on emotions in different literary traditions through various perspectives and methods. Some of the topics and authors covered are: Elena Ferrante, Elsa Morante, sentimentalism, cognitive narratology, fact/fiction, and digital literary studies.

The Summer School is open to anybody interested in the topic, with credits available for graduate students.

 

Here is the full program: http://bit.ly/ENTbro

Registration is open until June, 30th: http://bit.ly/ent2019

NHS Directors in Naples

Wednesday 17 April 2019 at the University of Suor Orsola Benincasa (Naples)  the NeuroHumanities Studies Directors, Grazia Pulvirenti and Renata Gambino, presented their new books “The Narrative Mind of Heinrich von Kleist” and “Stories. Minds. Worlds. A Neurohermeneutic approach to literature”.

 

New NHS 2019 Program and Abstracts

NHS 2019 is now online!

Have a look to the NHS 2019 Program and Abstracts

Read information about this year Keynote Speakers

Participate in the Dialogue!

 

6th NeuroHumanities Dialogue – Beauty and Embodiment in the Arts


Beauty and Embodiment in the Arts

 

NewHums Research Center – Neurocognitive and Humanities Studies

 

University of CataniaInternational NeuroHumanities Studies Network

 

6th NHS Dialogue 2019, 24th-25th May 2019

 

Catania, Benedictine Monastery, Machiavelli Theatre

 

On May 24th and 25th 2019, the interdepartmental research center NewHums – Neurocognitive and Humanities Studies – organises the sixth Neuro Humanities Dialogue with the title “Beauty and Embodiment in the Arts”. The aim of this year dialogue is to investigate the bound between works of art and our physical perception of them.

 

During recent years, the NewHums research center has promoted a prolific interdisciplinary discussion (in the form of yearly NHS Dialogues), engaging several international research groups on various topics, such as neuroaesthetics, metaphors, cognition and imagination. NewHums aimed at defining possible and new approaches to the study of the literary text and the work of art, process involving both humanities and science. The present Dialogue focuses on the analysis of multiple parameters in the aesthetic perception of a work of art, for instance, its subjective and objective qualities and the concept of beauty as primordial element in the relationship between mankind and artistic creation. In this frame, corporeity  can be seen as a bridge between internal world and external output, human being and art, questioning the dynamics between the percipient subject and the perceived object. The interconnected response is the starting point of embodied cognition, id est, the epistemological foundation of the deep interweaving between humanities and cognitive sciences.

 

Knowledge is thought to be an embodied reality, strictly bound to mind and body simultaneously and the embodiment is the existential condition of the subject, as implication. The physiological and biological nature of the human body is then the premise for every form of subjectivity, consciousness, thought, expression, social interaction, time and aesthetic experience. The artistic product is the point of confluence of the human mind and the external world, body and beauty represent the Cartesian axes by means of which, the aesthetic experience moves.

Giovanna Cermelli’s review of “La Mente Narrativa di Heinrich von Kleist” by Renata Gambino and Grazia Pulvirenti

We thank professor Giovanna Cermelli for her review on the prestigious journal Osservatorio Critico della Germanistica.

You can download the full review at the following  here

Stefano Ballerio’s Review of Gambino, Renata and Grazia Pulvirenti.Storie menti mondi. Approccio neuroermeneutico alla letteratura. Mimesis, 2018.

The recent study of Renata Gambino and Grazia Pulvirenti on the Neurohermenutics approach to literature (Storie menti mondi) was reviewed from professor Stefano Ballerio on the prestigious international journal Enthymema.

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The Neuro Humanities Studies Network aims at creating a multidisciplinary research community in order to develop and structure a linking platform for neuro-scientific, cognitive topics and humanities.


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