Cognitive Science and Medieval Studies: An Introduction

(Hardback)

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What is the value of mapping how neurons fire when engaging with literature and art How can we understand psychological stress as a historically specific phenomenon What can medieval mystics teach us about contemplation and cognition With the rapid development of the cognitive sciences and their importance to how we contemplate questions about the mind and society, recent research in the humanities has been characterized by a cognitive turn. For their part, the humanities play an important role in forming popular ideas of the human mind and in analyzing the way cognitive, psychological, and emotional phenomena are experienced in time and space. Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies aims to inspire medievalists and other scholars within the humanities to engage with the tools and investigative methodologies deriving from cognitive sciences. Contributors explore topics including medieval and modern philosophy of mind, the psychology of religion, the history of psychological medicine, and the re-emergence of the body in cognition.

Reviews

This collection strikes out boldly: refusing to prioritise the sciences as automatically primary in epistemological or methodological terms; exposing the central concept of neuromedievalism to critique; and inviting contributors and readers alike to consider the bases, possibilities, and limits of its capacity to enlighten. The result is enlivening. This fascinating collection offers no simple blueprint for applying cognitive sciences to medieval questions (or vice versa) but rather encourages us to consider what value might be added to each by bringing the two together. There will be some dead ends, it acknowledges, but the potential for mutual enrichment is real and exciting.
-- Kathleen Neal, Monash University

Author Bio

Juliana Dresvina is a member of the History Faculty at the University of Oxford, teaching on late-medieval devotion and history of mentality to Middlebury College-CMRS Oxford Humanities Program. Victoria Blud is a research associate in the Department of English and Related Literatures at the University of York, specialising in studies of gender, transgressive speech, emotion, cognition, and ideas about the body.