Contact: anezka.kuzmicova@littvet.su.se
My dissertation (Mental Imagery in the Experience of Literary Narrative: Views from Embodied Cognition, 2013) proposes an analysis of readers’ mental imagery, positioned at a confluence of literary theory and the cognitive sciences. Questions asked throughout the dissertation include the following:
- What are the basic varieties of mental imagery in the reading of literary narrative?
- By what contents or narrative strategies are they most likely to be prompted?
- What is it like to experience a mental image of a particular variety?
- What are its psychophysiological underpinnings?
- How does a mental image of a particular variety relate to perception?
- How does it relate to higher-order meaning-making?
My current research focuses on the mechanisms of readers’ attention more generally, across genres and media. I am also working on smaller projects dealing with literary reading, emotion, and literacy, partly in collaboration with scholars from several other universities across Scandinavia.
Selected publications:
- 2014. "Literary Narrative and Mental Imagery: A View from Embodied Cognition", Style 48. Under utgivning.
- 2014, in collaboration with Ellen Esrock. "Visual imagery in reading", Michael Kelly (ed.), Encyclopedia of Aesthetics: Second Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Forthcoming.
- 2013. Mental Imagery in the Experience of Literary Narrative: Views from Embodied Cognition (diss.), Stockholm: Stockholm University. 177 pages.
- 2013. "Outer vs. inner reverberations: Verbal auditory imagery and meaning-making in literary narrative", Journal of Literary Theory 7(1-2). 111-134.
- 2013. "The words and worlds of literary narrative: The trade-off between verbal presence and direct presence in the activity of reading", Lars Bernaerts et al. (eds.), Stories and Minds: Cognitive Approaches to Literary Narrative. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 191-231.
- 2012. "Fidelity without mimesis: Mental imagery from visual description", Gregory Currie et al. (eds.), Mimesis: Metaphysics, Cognition, Pragmatics. London: College Publications. 271-313.
- 2012. "Presence in the reading of literary narrative: A case for motor enactment", Semiotica 189(1/4). 23-48.
- 2009. "Skalin, Lars-Åke: Narrative, Fictionality, and Literariness. The Narrative Turn and the Study of Literary Fiction" (review), Samlaren 130. 346-348.
- 2005. "En myrtenkvist i högra ögat. Torgny Lindgrens Legender i möte med bysantinska helgonberättelser", Samlaren 126. 204-248.