•  374
    The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2015.
    The Oxford handbook of cognitive literary studies' applies developments in cognitive science to a wide range of literary texts that span multiple historical periods and numerous national literary traditions. The volume is divided into five parts: Narrative, History, Imagination; Emotions and Empathy; The New Unconscious; Empirical and Qualitative Studies of Literature; and Cognitive Theory and Literary Experience. Most notably, the volume features case studies representing not just North America…Read more
  •  285
    Fiction and theory of mind: An exchange
    Philosophy and Literature 31 (1): 189-196. 2007.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 31.1 (2007) 189-196MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Fiction and Theory of Mind: An ExchangeLisa Zunshine University of KentuckyBrian Boyd's review of my new book, Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel (Ohio State University Press, 2006) engages a large variety of issues.1 I would like to address an important question about the integration of scientific methodology with…Read more
  •  159
    An innovative account that brings together cognitive science, ethnography, and literary history to examine patterns of “mindreading” in a wide range of literary works.
  •  111
    Eighteenth-century print culture and the "truth" of fictional narrative
    Philosophy and Literature 25 (2): 215-232. 2001.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 215-232 [Access article in PDF] Eighteenth-Century Print Culture and the "Truth" of Fictional Narrative Lisa Zunshine As a session entitled "Truth" at a recent Modern Language Association of America annual convention has demonstrated, the obsession with the epistemologies of truth is alive and well. Our "familiar ways of thinking and talking about truth," as one of the speakers, Barbara Herrnstei…Read more
  •  110
    "Manipulating Metacognion in Witness for the Prosecution"
    Critical Analysis of Law 10 (1). 2023.
    This essay exemplifies a cognitive approach to literary and film studies, with particular emphasis on fictional reimagining of legal institutions. It draws on research of cognitive scientists who study metacognition—specifically, the difference between reflective and intuitive beliefs—to suggest that courtroom dramas, such as Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution (1957), can manipulate their viewers into believing something that they, on some level, know cannot be true. In this case, viewer…Read more
  •  107
    Cognirtive Approaches to Literature and Honglou Meng
    Journal of Human Cognition 1 (2): 58-72. 2017.
    This essay is based on the talk that I gave at the 2nd International Conference and the 4th National Conference for Cognitive Poetics at Guandong University of Foreign Studies in Guangzhou in the fall 2015. When inviting me to participate in that scholarly meeting, Professor Xiong Muqing suggested that I start by discussing the relationship between cognitive approaches to literature (a field that I represent) and cognitive poetics. So here, too, I will begin by considering the issue of this rela…Read more
  •  103
    How Memories Become Literature
    Substance 51 (3): 92-114. 2022.
    Cognitive science can help literary scholars formulate specific questions to be answered by archival research. This essay takes, as its starting point, embedded mental states (that is, mental states about mental states) and their role in generating literary subjectivity. It then follows the transformation of embedded mental states throughout several manuscripts of Christa Wolf’s autobiographical novel, Patterns of Childhood (Kindheitsmuster, 1976), available at the Berlin Academy of Arts. The au…Read more
  •  88
    "Who Is He to Speak of My Sorrow?"
    Poetics Today 41 (2): 223-41. 2020.
    This article suggests that comparative literature scholars may benefit from the awareness that different communities around the world subscribe to different models of mind and that works of fiction can thus be fruitfully analyzed in relation to those local ideologies of mind. Taking as her starting point the “opacity of mind” doctrine, the author compares cultural practices originating in communities in which people think but do not talk publicly about others’ internal states, to those originati…Read more
  •  19
    The Commotion of Souls
    Substance 45 (2): 118-142. 2016.
    First, a couple of emotional dilemmas:I love bringing my six-year-old to the Metropolitan Museum of Art when we are in New York in the summer. On Thursdays, they have a special hour for children. A curator first talks with them about an artwork and then encourages them to draw pictures inspired by it. My son seems to enjoy it. Yet every time I tell him that we are about to go to the MET, he says that he doesn’t want to. Don’t you remember, I plead with him, that you liked it last time? No, he sa…Read more