Neuro Humanities Studies

CFP: International workshop Multimodal language

Call for Papers: International workshop

Multimodal language: theoretical perspectives and research methods

Catania, 13-14 March 

The investigation of linguistic communication in natural contexts cannot ignore that human language is an inherently multimodal system. Indeed, the interaction between the vocal and the other bodily modalities is articulated within closely cooperating semiotic subsystems, dynamically completing each other into a coherent message (McNeill 1992; Kendon 2014; Capirci et al. 2022). Within a perspective that sees language as a form of cooperative action, the vocal and the gestural components – along with gaze and facial expressions – coordinate in a clearly interdependent way. This happens both at the level of expression and at the level of content, with the different modalities interacting on the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic level (see McNeill 1992, Kendon 2004, Loehr 2012, Volterra et al. 2017, among many others).
Differently from the first generation of scholars in multimodality, whose first and essential need was to build terminologies and methods of analysis that could highlights the specifics of each modality, the foremost theoretical challenge in contemporary research is to explore theories and methodologies that could describe how these modalities interact in forming organized structures (Trujillo & Holler 2023). This requires, obviously, new categories and new descriptions, together with a move away from mere quantifications of occurrences towards other variables. It therefore becomes necessary to give greater consideration to the qualitative aspects of each component and the way in which they are deployed in the flow of discourse.
A growing number of scholars in linguistics, psychology and

New book: Mind the Text! Neurohermeneutics for Suspicious Readers

  by Renata Gambino & Grazia Pulvirenti, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2024

At the convergence of human studies, biocultural and neuroscientific research, this book offers unprecedented insights into the interpretation of literary texts. It presents the neurohermeneutics of suspicion—a bold, innovative approach illuminating the intricate bond between literature and the human mind. Embracing ambiguity as a hallmark of literature, readers are encouraged to adopt a suspicious stance to unearth the complex, multilayered and dynamic nature of literary texts, thereby fully engaging their imagination and their embodied, emotional and imaginative faculties. Our exploration navigates the crossroads of language, thought, culture, and biology, delving into hidden layers of meaning within literary texts. This transformative exploration not only redefines literary scholarship but also offers lay readers a dynamic, immersive reading experience. Ultimately, this book aims to ignite curiosity, suspense, and surprise, transforming the act of reading into a creative and engaging journey through the depths of the human mind and aesthetic experiences.

 Info about the Book

In memory of prof. Giancarlo Magnano San Lio

«Un uomo perbene. Tormentato, curioso.
Che ha voluto vivere in proprio, conoscendo le miserie dell’Umanità,
ha scelto di amarne la poesia e l’incanto.»

***

«A respectable man. Tormented, curious.
Who wanted to live on his own. Knowing the miseries of Humanity,
he chose to love its poetry and enchantment»

ENID Teach – NOOC Collaborative and Research Methodology

 15th September – 15th November 2024

The NewHums Research Centre kindly invites everyone to join the 4th and last edition of

 NOOC Collaborative and Research Methodology

 

What is this NOOC

This course (NOOC) is part of the training proposal by the project Erasmus+, “European network in D-flexible teaching (ENID-Teach)”, PROJECT NUMBER – 2021-1-ES01-KA220-HED-000027551, KA220-HED – Cooperation partnerships in higher education, coordinated by UNED – Spain. The main goal of the project is to provide digital training to university lecturers about specific teaching and research methodologies, which can be used and improved introducing digital tools and environments.

This course, produced by University of Catania, introduces participants to the Collaborative and Research Methodology and how digital tools can improve the teaching practice. The course will present the theory of collaborative teaching and research as based on three main theoretical pillars: constructivism, distributed cognition and computer supported collaborative learning. It will also introduce some digital tools to be used to enrich the teaching practice.

More Info about ENID Teach

We warmly invite European educators to enhance their teaching toolkit by participating in our free training programme on “Flexible and Innovative Methodologies.“

Cognitive Futures 2024 @ University of Catania

Deadline: 15th January 2024

10 years Cognitive Futures in The Arts and Humanities

From 4E to 5E Cognition: about Emotions

June 3-5, 2024 – Aesthetic Emotions

10 years ago the series of Cognitive Future conferences started in Bangor, moved to Durham, Oxford, Stony Brook, Kent, Mainz and was held online (instead of in Osnabrück) during pandemic emergency. The war prevented its taking place in St. Petersburg. This year it took place in Warsaw; in 2024 it will be Catania – with a ten-year anniversary.The focus will be on the latest epistemic paradigm of 4E Cognition and

Linguaggio come Prisma

A very interesting meeting at the Bendectine Monastery in Catania

Poster – Linguaggio come Prisma

The Brain, Ambiguity and Art – Meeting in Alicante

Ambiguity as a Characteristic of the Architecture of the Human Mind – Semir Zeki

Variability, and the choice that it entails, is the bread and butter of evolution. It is therefore not surprising to find that variability is built into ordinary perception and is also a fundamental characteristic of great works of art. The reason for this is simple; it provides for choice and is therefore in line with great evolutionary principles. In works of art – whether derived from visual art or musical art – ambiguity is key. In ordinary perception it may act as a safeguard, protecting the individual from unsafe decisions. In art, it allows for the multiple interpretations of the same stimulus or work. The neurobiological definition of ambiguity is quite precise and different from the usual dictionary definitions. The latter usually define ambiguity as “uncertainty” or “confusing” or “of doubtful meaning”. The neurobiological definition is the exact opposite: it is certainty but certainty that occupies the conscious stage momentarily, before ceding its place to another momentary certainty. Hence, in neurobiological terms, there is no correct answer to an ambiguous stimulus, because all answers are correct momentarily. This is so regardless of whether one is viewing simple “ambiguous” figures such as the “rabbit-duck” bi-stable figure, the metastable paintings of Dalí or the finished masterpieces of Vermeer, Caravaggio and Tiziano which, in spite of their “finished” status, allow of multiple interpretations, none of which is the correct one because all are correct; it also applies to literary and musical works. I will give a more detailed description of the varieties of ambiguity and try to address, in outline, the question of how the conflict between them is resolved neurobiologically.

…

To know more and to follow online please register here : https://platonicacademylondon.wordpress.com/events/

 

Master Executive NEUROSCIENCE and ART – Bologna

Would you like to acquire technical-scientific skills that enable you to take an innovative approach to projects in the field of art?

Would you like to know what Neuroaesthetics is all about and understand its importance in museum educational proposals and exhibition practices?

Here is the new edition of the Executive Master in NEUROSCIENCE and ART, starting on 14 January 2023 in Bologna.

What you will study:

  • The visual process by the brain and the areas of aesthetic processing
  • Emotional marketing and the construction of the memory of an event
  • Ethics and cognitive science
  • Neuroaesthetics and its applications
  • Museum education as interactivity on the territory
  • The didactics of art as therapy
  • Hybridisation practices between art and science

 

The lecturers in charge of the training course, from prestigious universities and important museums, will accompany you in the development of the project of your interest, with a final operational workshop.

Here more information about the course (in Italian)


Call for papers “The Digital Environmental Humanities. Towards Theory and Praxis”

Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies
ISSN 1218-7364

All HJEAS’ archived issues are available on JSTOR, the largest, most available website for humanities journals, current issues are also accessible electronically on ProQuest, including the most recent indexed by the SCOPUS database, indexed and abstracted by the MLA International Bibliography. For more about the HJEAS go to: [https://ojs.lib.unideb.hu/hjeas/about].

Call for Papers
“The Digital Environmental Humanities. Towards Theory and Praxis”

Over the past years the rapid technological improvements, innovations and use of digital applications have transformed us into living and working in virtual environments. We are now facing ‘oceans’ of big data, inaugurating what has been called the “Digital Anthropocene.” Gaining momentum since around the 1950s, the Digital Humanities (previously referred to as Humanities Computing or Computing in the Humanities) “is a diverse and still emerging field that encompasses the practice of humanities research in and through information technology, and the exploration of how the humanities may evolve through their engagement with technology, media, and computational methods.”  As we move from the first wave of qualitative data to the second, which is apt to be more critical, interpretative and empirical with the use of toolkits and services (Presner, 2010), the rise of a third wave introduces entirely new interdisciplinary paradigms, convergent fields, new methodologies and concepts as well as new models and patterns while working on cultural texts.

Although the disciplines of Digital Humanities and Environmental Humanities appear to work with different methodological approaches (Posthumus and Sinclair, 2016: 370), they can provide a shared space for exploring questions such as how nature could be in dialogue with a computer or how technology could help us to understand environmental issues. Both disciplines adopt common vocabulary such as “environment,” “system,” “network, “collectivism,” “individualism” while approaching texts. The Digital Humanities and Environmental Humanities are “interdisciplinary and collaborative” disciplines (Cohen and LeMenager, 2016: 340) where “[n]ew tools, new metaphors, provide second-order feedback loops that inform the original metaphors of nature and ecology” (Morey, 2012: 119). Their collaborative work aims through new critical tools to shed light on the complex entanglements of nature with the digital sphere, and their relationship to each other when introduced into a system. A well-known concept across research is “digital ecologies” or “digital ecology or environment” (Wellmon, 2012: 77), which describes multiple reading and virtual environments, including their interactions made possible by the use of digital analysis tools while working on a text or database.
As Finne Arne Jørgensen notes, the “idea of nature is becoming very hard to separate from the digital tools and media we use to observe, interpret, and manage it” (2014, 109). This interweaving presents a challenge that we have to face while developing and applying digital tools, applications, portals, repositories, and curated interactive objects to expand the research of Digital Environmental Humanities.
In this journal issue, we will explore exactly how the disciplines of Digital Humanities and Environmental Humanities can provide us with new perspectives and critical tools. In particular, considering mainly literary studies, philosophy studies, media studies, visual studies and Art, we will explore and discuss the different ways in which concepts such as digital ecologies, digital environments, networks and so forth are approached by these disciplines in both theory and praxis. The new approaches and concepts form a ‘digital turn’ in the humanities, expanding the relationship between humans and the more-than-human world, and the characteristics of such a relationship, under which conditions (hybrid, symbiotic, etc.) and for what purposes, for example, education. Furthermore, the Digital Environmental Humanities offer insights on “Citizen Humanities” in which the involvement of public space, citizens and academia assists the better understanding of the practical aspects of the relationship between the human and the more-than-human world.
We invite papers that consider the various interactions between Digital Humanities and Environmental Humanities in order to open up new forms of inquiry for critical approaches to the Humanities. Areas of interest for this special journal issue include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

● Digital Environmental Humanities in Literary Theory (Ecocriticism, Algorithmic Literary Theory) and Comparative Literature
● Digital Geographies and Spatialities
● Digitalocene (e.g. Anthropocene, Capitalocene, etc.)
● Digital Tools, Digital Applications, Digital Repositories and Archives, Data Visualization in/for Environmental Humanities
● Digital Ecologies and Topics from the Continental Philosophy
● Digital Environmental Humanities and Posthumanism, Transhumanism, AI, and Ethics
● Digital Ecologies, Plant Studies, and Animal Studies
● Digital Ecologies, Aesthetics and Art
● Digital Ecologies in Media and Film Studies
● Digital Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice
● Digital Ecologies, Medical Humanities (e.g. Pandemics) and Biotechnology
● Digital Oil and Energy Humanities
● Digital Environmental Pedagogies and Storytelling
● Digital Ecologies in Citizen Humanities, Smart Cities and Citizenship Futures
● Biomimicry and Digital Modeling
● Towards the future of Digital Environmental Humanities as Discipline in Theory and Praxis

References
Cohen, Jerome Jeffrey, and Stephanie LeMenager. “Introduction. Assembling the Ecological Digital
Humanities”, PMLA 131.2 (2016): 340-346. doi: 10.1632/pmla.2016.131.2.340.
Jørgensen, Finne Arne. “The Armchair Traveler’s Guide to Digital Environmental Humanities”,
Environmental Humanities 4.1 (2014): 95-112. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3614944.
Morey, Sean. “Digital Ecologies” in Dobrin, I. Sidney. (2012). (Ed.). Ecology, Writing Theory, and
New Media. Writing Ecology (New York and London: Routledge), 106-121.
Presner, Todd. (2010). “Digital Humanities 2.0: A Report on Knowledge” in Emerging Disciplines,
edited by Melissa Bailar (Houston: Rice University Press).
Sinclair, Stéfan and Stephanie Posthumus. (2016). “Digital? Environmental: Humanities” in The
Routledge Companion to Environmental Humanities edited by Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen and Michelle Niemann (London and New York: Routledge).
Wellmon, Chad. (2012). “Why Google Isn’t Making Us Stupid…or Smart”. ISAC. The Hedgehog
Review. Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture 14:1
<https://lecture.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~cwpgally/references/2012W_RD_Google_essay.pdf>, [accessed 29/05/20222].

Editors 
Peggy Karpouzou, Assistant Professor in Theory of Literature, Faculty of Philology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
E-mail: pkarpouzou@phil.uoa.gr

Nikoleta Zampaki, PhD Candidate in Modern Greek Literature, Faculty of Philology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
E-mail: nikzamp@phil.uoa.gr

Submissions’ Guidelines and Deadlines

Deadline for sending an abstract (approx. 300 words and a short CV) to both Editors’e-mails pkarpouzou@phil.uoa.gr andnikzamp@phil.uoa.gr: 31 October 2022.

Deadline for sending the full papers to both Editors’ e-mails pkarpouzou@phil.uoa.gr and nikzamp@phil.uoa.gr: 30April 2023.

More about full papers’ and submissions’ guidelines may be found here: [https://ojs.lib.unideb.hu/hjeas/about/submissions].

Please direct any questions to both Editors’ e-mails:
pkarpouzou@phil.uoa.gr and nikzamp@phil.uoa.gr

Project

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.


Click on each keyword to show papers related with it.

Research Network

Click on each point to show researchers involved. For more information about our research network, please check the Members section in the menu bar.