Introduction - Empathy and the Aesthetics of Language Symposium

Empathy and the Aesthetics of Language
Thursday, Oct. 5—Friday, Oct. 6, 2023
An International Symposium

Organizers

Vittorio Gallese MD is Professor of Psychobiology at the University of Parma, Italy, Senior Research Fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies of Columbia University, USA, Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Philosophy of the School of Advanced Study of the University of London, UK, honorary member of the American College of Psychiatrists and Member of the Academia Europaea. Cognitive neuroscientist is the author of more than 300 scientific publications and three books.

David Romand is a philosopher, historian of knowledge, aesthetician, and language theorist, currently an associate researcher at Centre Gilles-Gaston Granger, Aix-Marseille University (France). He works on a variety of topics, at the interface between various disciplines, both in a historical and contemporary perspective, with a strong focus on the cross-disciplinary field of affective science. As an aesthetician, he has developed expertise in the psychoaesthetic tradition, as it emerged in Germany and Austria between about 1860 and 1910, and notably in Theodor Lipps’s aesthetics. As a language theorist, he is interested in the link between language and affectivity, especially in the place of epistemic feelings in semantic, semiotic, and metalinguistic phenomena, as well as in the role of empathy in language processes. Among his recent publications, it is worth mentioning Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity. Theoretical, Epistemological, and Historical Perspectives on Linguistic Feeling (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), which he coedited with Michel Le Du. He is currently writing a comprehensive monograph on Lipps, to be published in 2024 in Palgrave Macmillan.

Hannah Wojciehowski is the Arthur J. and Wilhelmina Doré Thaman Professor of English and the Director of the Program in Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Wojciehowski received her Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Yale University. She is the author of Old Masters, New Subjects: Early Modern and Poststructuralist Theories of Will and Group Identity in the Renaissance World, and she edited Shakespeare’s Cymbeline for the New Kittredge Shakespeare Series. She has authored numerous book chapters, articles, and creative works on the early modern literature and culture and on literary theory past and present. She is currently co-editor of Texas Studies in Literature and Language. Wojciehowski has co-authored several articles on cognitive literary theory with neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese, including their 2011 essay “How Stories Make Us Feel” and “Embodied Simulation and Emotional Engagement with Fictional Characters” (Routledge Companion to Literature and Emotion, 2022), and a special issue of Costellazioni entitled Narrative and the Biocultural Turn (2018).


NEUROSCIENCE & HUMANITIES LAB
Centre for Advanced Studies in Cognitive Neuroscience & the Humanities

The interdepartmental lab N&H of the University of Parma aims to promote and develop research in the field of relations between the humanities and cognitive neurosciences. This objective is pursued through the realization of scientific research projects, workshops, seminars, conferences and conventions, promotions of research networks and Fellowships, building of national and international relations with other universities and research centers active in this field, developing partnerships both with public and private entities and institutions.

This YouTube Channel of N&H offers a series of online resources for those interested to learn more on these topics.

Il Laboratorio interdipartimentale N&H dell’Università degli Studi di Parma ha lo scopo di promuovere e sviluppare la ricerca nell’ambito delle relazioni tra le discipline umanistiche e le neuroscienze cognitive. Questo obiettivo è perseguito attraverso la realizzazione di progetti di ricerca scientifica, workshop, seminari, conferenze e convegni, promozioni di reti di ricerca e di Fellowships, costruzione di relazioni nazionali e internazionali con altri Atenei e Centri di ricerca attivi in questo campo, sviluppando rapporti sia con enti e istituzioni di carattere pubblico che privato.

Questo canale YouTube di N&H offre una serie di risorse online per coloro che sono interessati ad approfondire queste tematiche.

NEUROSCIENCE & HUMANITIES LAB
Centre for Advanced Studies in Cognitive Neuroscience & the Humanities

Director: Prof. Vittorio Gallese
https://personale.unipr.it/en/ugovdoc...
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https://unipr.academia.edu/VittorioGa...

Deputy Director: Prof. Michele Guerra
https://personale.unipr.it/en/ugovdoc...
https://unipr.academia.edu/MicheleGuerra