NP Mr. Brain, Meet Mr. Text

[Doug Millison]

http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/nnh/seminar/
Description
This is an exploratory seminar in a new field: the relation between 
what we are finding out about the brain--cognitive science--and what 
we think we know about literature. In the last two decades we have 
seen an explosion of knowledge about the brain. I'm interested in how 
the new discoveries about the brain and the processes of perception, 
memory, word recognition, cognitive development, metaphor, and 
personal identity, might bear on some of our ideas in literary 
criticism and theory. In 1998, there was a large, multi-session Forum 
at te MLA devoted to this topic, and I suspect it will be a growing 
area of interest in the literary world.

I plan to open up these topics: personal styles; what goes on when we 
read; Chomskyan and post-Chomskyan ideas of language; cognitive 
theories of metaphor; the mammalian and neo-mammalian brain; kinds of 
memory; whether language ability evolved; culture and the child's 
growing brain. In this seminar, we shall explore ways in which these 
new discoveries bear on our understanding of literature and the 
literary processes of creation and response. We shall be reading such 
people as: Noam Chomsky, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Hanna and 
Antonio Damasio, Jerry Fodor, Heinz Lichtenstein, Steven Pinker, 
Terrence Deacon, Gerald Edelman, some psychologists of reading, and 
some people who have begun to apply these ideas to literary 
questions: Richard Ohmann, Mark Turner, Ellen Winner, and myself.

Because it is an exploratory seminar, I hope for a good deal of 
improvisation as we find this or that author or topic fruitful. I 
hope to cover a wide range of material by having students write 
reports of books for the other members of the seminar. Term papers 
will be optional, but there will be a final examination. Grades will 
be based on discussion, reports, and the final. The seminar is open 
to qualified undergraduates. Contact the instructor at 
nholland at ufl.edu.