Prof. Dr. Laura Otis

Projekt Kognitive Handwerkskunst: Wie vier Autor*innen die Sinne ihrer Leserschaft ansprechen

Zur Person / Vita

Laura Otis is a Professor of English Emerita at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Her interdisciplinary research compares the creative thinking of scientific and literary writers, especially in their uses of metaphor. Otis holds a BS in Biochemistry, an MA in Neuroscience, a PhD in Comparative Literature, and an MFA in Fiction. She is the author of the academic books Banned Emotions, Rethinking Thought, Müller’s Lab, Networking, Membranes, and Organic Memory; of the novels Clean, Refiner’s Fire, Lacking in Substance, The Memory Hive, Auf Wiedersehen, and The Tantalus Letters; and of the story collection D Minor. Her research has been supported by MacArthur, Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Humboldt Fellowships, and she was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her current project, Cognitive Craft, investigates techniques used by fiction-writers to awaken and blend senses in readers' imaginations.

Personal website: www.lauraotis.com

Psychology Today Blog: www.psychologytoday.com/intl/contributors/laura-c-otis-phd

Gastaufenthalte

  • 2024-2025 Gastwissenschaftlerin am ZfL mit dem Projekt Lebenswissen
  • 2014-2024 Gastwissenschaftlerin am Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung mit der Forschungsgruppe Geschichte der Gefühle
  • 2013 Gastwissenschaftlerin am ZfL
  • 2000-2012 Gastwissenschaftlerin am Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Jury-, Ausschuss- und Beiratsmitgliedschaften

  • seit 2023 Forum Mitglied, Transdisciplinary Connections in Cognitive and Affect Studies, Modern Language Association
  • Executive Board Mitglied, Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts
  • Editorial Board Mitglied, Configurations

Arbeitsschwerpunkte

  • Literatur und die Naturwissenschaften
  • Kognitive Literaturwissenschaft
  • Literatur and die Sinne
  • Literatur and Emotion
  • Englische, amerikanische, deutsche, spanische, und französische Literatur des 19., 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts
  • Geschichte der Neurobiologie, Physiologie und Biologie

Publikationen

Monographien

  • Banned Emotions. How Metaphors Can Shape What People Feel. New York: Oxford University Press 2019
  • Rethinking Thought. Inside the Minds of Creative Scientists and Artists. New York: Oxford University Press 2016
  • Müller’s Lab. New York: Oxford University Press 2007
  • Networking. Communicating with Bodies and Machines in the Nineteenth Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2001
  • Membranes. Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Science, and Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1999
  • Organic Memory. History and the Body in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1994

Herausgaben

  • Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century. An Anthology. Oxford, UK: Oxford     University Press 2002

Fiktion

  • D Minor. Stories. Bloomington: iUniverse 2024
  • The Memory Hive. A Novel. Bloomington: iUniverse 2020
  • The Tantalus Letters. A Novel. Bloomington: iUniverse 2020
  • Auf Wiedersehen. A Novel. Bloomington: iUniverse 2020
  • Lacking in Substance. A Novel. Bloomington: iUniverse 2020
  • Refiner’s Fire. A Novel. Bloomington: iUniverse 2019
  • Clean. A Novel. Bloomington: iUniverse 2019

Ausgewählte Aufsätze

  • Reading as a Rambunctious Boy-Girl, in: Heta M. Pyrhönen und Sander Gilman (Hg.): Readers for Life: How Reading and Listening in Childhood Shapes Us. London: Reaktion Books, 2024, 144-152
  • Feeling Environments: Emotions beyond Human Interiority. Von Frederik Schröer and Laura Otis, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 49 (2023), 138-158
  • Creative Writing: Embracing Unfamiliar Knowledge, in: Configurations 31.4 (2023), 343-350
  • Whose Spirit? Literature, Appropriation, and the Responsibilities of Artists, in: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 97 (2023), 217-222
  • The Role of Multimodal Imagery in Life Writing, in: SubStance 51.3 (2022), 115-131
  • Affective Neuroscience: The Symbiosis of Scientific and Literary Knowledge, in: Patrick Colm Hogan, Bradley J. Irish, und Lalita Pandit Hogan (Hg.): The Routledge Companion to Literature and Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2022, 15-25

Ausgewählte Blog Posts

  • Learning by Touching. Psychology Today. 21 Nov. 2024
  • What’s White about White Noise? We Can Learn from the Synesthesia of Everyday Language. Psychology Today. 1 Sept. 2024
  • Readers Need Description to Believe a Story. Psychology Today. 19 Juni 2024
  • The Sound of Genocide. We Hear the Truths We Deny. Psychology Today. 13 März 2024

Vorträge

Ausgewählte Vorträge

  • Input from Literary Studies, Workshop "Writers, Scholars, Scientists. Experimental Encounters with Literary Depictions of Science. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves von Karen Joy Fowler." Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, 26.11.2024
  • Merging Scientific and Literary Craft Knowledge. The Case of Multimodal Imagery. Universität Regensburg. 18.5.2024