Psychology, Philosophy and Literary Studies Read Together
April 11–12, 2019
Literature has been described as an archive of human feeling and thought, reaching back into antiquity, and as a vehicle for the ways in which we make sense of our experience and negotiate it socially. While literary scholars often do not relate to psychological notions of cognition and emotion in their discussion, psychologists and philosophers might reference literary works as part of a shared canon of knowledge in the opening move of an article, but an engagement with literary texts at eye-level is still rare.
This workshop proposes the format of shared reading in order to launch an interdisciplinary exchange that takes literary texts as its pivot. Researchers from psychology, philosophy and literary studies are invited to present their response to a set of short literary texts and to comment on how these relate to their discipline and the concepts they work with. The procedure through literary reading is meant to work as (1) a challenge to “apply” the theoretical models and concepts from the sciences in less everyday contexts, (2) as a common ground of debate between the two cultures and, potentially, (3) as a moment of distancing from the presuppositions that come with individual disciplines.
Convener
Contact
Participants
Sibylle
Baumbach
Universität Stuttgart
Regina
Fabry
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Chris
Frith
University College London
Uta
Frith
University College London
Eva
Geulen
Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin
Johanna
Kaakinen
University of Turku
Thomas
Metzinger
Fellow
2008/2009
Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz
Ylva
Østby
University of Oslo
Gisèle
Sapiro
Fellow
2018/2019
École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris
Juliane
Vogel
Fellow
2018/2019
Universität Konstanz
Michael
Wheeler
University of Stirling
Sam
Wilkinson
University of Exeter
Emily
Apter
New York University, The American Academy in Berlin