CFP: Neuroscience and Modern Fiction

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2012/09/your-brain-pseudoscience

"Happily, a new branch of the neuroscience explains everything genre may 
be created at any time by the simple expedient of adding the prefix 
“neuro” to whatever you are talking about. Thus, “neuroeconomics” is the 
latest in a long line of rhetorical attempts to sell the dismal science 
as a hard one; “molecular gastronomy” has now been trumped in the 
scientised gluttony stakes by “neurogastronomy”; students of Republican 
and Democratic brains are doing “neuropolitics”; literature academics 
practise “neurocriticism”. There is “neurotheology”, “neuromagic” 
(according to /Sleights of Mind/, an amusing book about how conjurors 
exploit perceptual bias) and even “neuromarketing”. Hoping it’s not too 
late to jump on the bandwagon, I have decided to announce that I, too, 
am skilled in the newly minted fields of neuroprocrastination and 
neuroflâneurship."

Sorry, couldn't resist!

(In Proust you'll find a lot of proto-neuroscience, though.)

On 23.03.2013 09:23, Krafft, John M. wrote:
> Call for Papers: Upcoming Special Issue of Modern Fiction Studies
>
> Neuroscience and Modern Fiction
> Guest Editor: Stephen J. Burn
> Deadline for Submissions: 1 February 2014
>
> The Editors of MFS seek essays that consider how modern fiction has
> evolved in dialogue with the neuroscientific revolution. In the
> aftermath of the so-called “Decade of the Brain” (the 1990s), a new
> wave of accessible surveys of brain research propounded a
> neuro-rhetoric that increasingly presents itself as the authoritative
> mode for addressing the total constellation of experience that once
> constituted the novel’s natural territory. But while scholars have
> drawn on the new sciences of mind to retool narratological studies and
> to facilitate Cognitive Historicist readings of classic literary
> texts, literary critics have rarely explored the ways that modern
> fiction has absorbed or contested the influence of neuroscience
> thought. What implications does the fertile intersection of
> neuroscience and narrative carry for fiction’s traditional building
> blocks (character motivation, plot structures, narrative
> architecture)? How does the novel’s language evolve in response to
> neuro-rhetoric? In terms of the broader conceptual issues, how is the
> neuroscientific conception of the self challenged or explored in
> fiction? What are the epistemological consequences of neural
> determinism for the novel’s fascination with contingency? How do our
> notions of genre evolve in a neurocentric age?
>
> Such examples are indicative not exhaustive, and we invite essays that
> explore how modern fiction has engaged with the new sciences of mind.
> Essays on individual writers and works are welcome, as well as essays
> on broader trends and issues raised by literature’s
> cross-fertilization with neuroscience.
>
> Essays should be 7,000 - 8,500 words, including all quotations and
> bibliographic references, and should follow the MLA Style Manual (7th
> edition) for internal citation and Works Cited. Please submit your
> essay via the online submission form at the following web address:
> https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/mfs/special_issues/
>
> Queries should be directed to Stephen J. Burn (sburn at nmu.edu).
>
> [Stephen tells me he'd like to see Pynchon's work represented in the issue.]
>
>

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