Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies

Leading scholars in cognitive cultural studies offer an engaging and accessible introduction to this emerging field.Drawing on the explosion of academic and public interest in cognitive science in the past two decades, this volume features articles that combine literary and cultural analysis with insights from neuroscience, cognitive evolutionary psychology and anthropology, and cognitive linguistics. Lisa Zunshine's introduction provides a broad overview of the field. The essays that follow are organized into four parts that explore developments in literary universals, cognitive historicism, cognitive narratology, and cognitive approaches in dialogue with other theoretical approaches, such as postcolonial studies, ecocriticism, aesthetics, and poststructuralism.Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies provides readers with grounding in several major areas of cognitive science, applies insights from cognitive science to cultural representations, and recognizes the cognitive approach's commitment to seeking common ground with existing literary-theoretical paradigms.This book is ideal for graduate courses and seminars devoted to cognitive approaches to cultural studies and literary criticism.

Lisa Zunshine is the Bush-Holbrook Professor of English at the University of Kentucky and author of Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel and Strange Concepts and the Stories They Make Possible: Cognition, Culture, Narrative, also published by Johns Hopkins.