general informationThe English Department encourages its students to pursue their particular interests while also developing a broad understanding of English, American, and Anglophone literature. Accordingly we offer an undergraduate specialization in "Literature and the Mind." Graduate students interested in the pursuit of psychoanalytic, philosophical, and neuroscientific approaches to literary study may take one segment of the First Qualifying Exam in "Literature and the Mind" in addition to courses on related topics. Finally, we sponsor a Symposium on "Literature and the Emotions." The Symposium topic for 2009-11 is "Talking Cures."Literature has always honored the power of the imagination in shaping our experience of the world. Current developments in psychoanalysis, psychology, philosophy, cognitive science and neurobiology confirm the profound importance of language in structuring the mind's representations and re-workings of reality. Study of the mind is now one of our most exciting and inventive fields of interdisciplinary research, informed by and informing not only literary criticism and theory but also the study of cultural and social practice. Language is known to play a central role in creating memories, processing emotions, and thinking. Verbal creativity and interpretation are vital to our survival and well-being; constructing narrative, analyzing the past, and creating fictional models are crucial to all human activity, from technological invention to falling in love to planning revolutions. This is why we have always needed, and always loved, literature. When we try to speak the unspeakable--whether trauma or rapture--we call it poetry. When our wishes are unfulfilled, we create legends. When we are terrified by one another, we put ourselves, and our conflicts, on stage, and try to learn empathy. "Literature and the Mind" explores how and why symbolic activity helps us create, rather than suffer from, reality. |
contact usAranye FradenburgSpecialization Director: Spring/Summer 2010 lfraden@english.ucsb.edu Kay Young Julie Carlson Nick Alward facultyProfessors:Abbott, Caldwell, Carlson, Donelan, Fradenburg, Gunn, Gutierrez-Jones, Newfield, Raley, Samolsky, and Young aFFILIATED FAcultyProfessors:Noelle Batt, Susan Derwin, Dominique Jullien, Ken Kosik, Sydney Levy, Ann Plane, Jonathan Schooler, Steve Smith, Ann Taves. |
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"With every tool man is perfecting his own organs. . . . In the photographic camera he has created an instrument which retains the fleeting visual impressions, just as a gramophone disc retains the fleeting auditory ones; both are at bottom materializations of the power he possesses of recollection, his memory. With the help of the telephone he can hear at distances which would be respected as unattainable even in a fairy tale. Writing was in its origin the voice of an absent person."
--(Sigmund Freud, 1929) |
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related linksSage Center for the Study of the MindPsychology Department Center for Evolutionary Psychology Philosophy Department Religious Studies Walter H. Capps Center Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology Counseling Services New Beginnings Counseling Center The Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination Seminar on Cognitive Theory and the Arts, co-Chairs Elaine Scarry and Alan Richardson Cognitive Science Program, UCSB Dana Foundation |
http://www.sagecenter.ucsb.edu http://www.psych.ucsb.edu http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/ http://www.philosophy.ucsb.edu http://www.religion.ucsb.edu http://www.cappscenter.ucsb.edu http://education.ucsb.edu/Graduate-Studies/... http://www.counseling.ucsb.edu 805-963-7777 http://philoctetes.org, info@philoctetes.org http://www2.bc.edu/~richarad/lcb/fea/cta.html http://www.cogsci.ucsb.edu www.dana.org |
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"I dreamt that it was night and that I was lying in bed. (My bed stood with its foot towards the window; in front of the window there was a row of old walnut trees. I know it was winter when I had the dream, and night-time.) Suddenly the window opened of
its own accord, and I was terrified to see that some white wolves were sitting on the big walnut tree in front of the window. There were six or seven of them. The wolves were quite white, and looked
more like foxes or sheep-dogs, for they had big tails like foxes and they had their ears pricked like dogs when they pay attention to something."
--(Sigmund Freud, 1918) |
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requirementsEnglish majors can specialize in Literature and the Mind. by taking, at any time before graduation, four approved courses. At least two of these must be courses taught by the English faculty (or affiliates) associated with the specialization. Two may be taken from a list of approved courses taught by instructors in other departments. These requirements can also be satisfied by taking a graduate course with the permission of the instructor. You may also petition the Mind Committee to have other courses approved for specialization credit.Other options for fulfilling the four-course requirement will be: a 199R (course credit for assisting a professor with research); a 199 independent study; an honors thesis; and, when our internship program is ready, a 199E (an example would be an internship conducting telephone intakes in a counseling center, or other volunteer work, like mentorship). |
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courses taught by english/affiliated faculty(You will need at least 2 of these)
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"What does the deep midnight declare? From a deep dream I woke . . . Where is time gone? Have I not sunk into deep wells? The world sleeps. Alas, Alas! The dog howls, the moon shines. Sooner would I die, die rather than tell you what my midnight heart thinks now."
--(Nietzsche, 1883-85) |
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