Our minds and the ways we tell stories are closely attuned, research shows, and scholar Fritz Breithaupt will explore how that connection works during a March visit as University Lecturer.
Breithaupt, a Provost Professor in Germanic Studies and Cognitive Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, will give a public lecture on “The Narrative Brain” on March 11 at 5 p.m. in the A.D. White House. Breithaupt will share several approaches to narrative processing, including data from the largest storytelling experiments to date.
“The combination of expertise in cognitive science and literary studies is often made to the expense of the latter,” said Laurent Dubreuil, professor of Romance studies and comparative literature in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and founder of Cornell’s Humanities Lab. “Fritz Breithaupt is one of the rare researchers doing experimental work with literature while maintaining a commitment to theory.”
Breithaupt’s research spans European literature from the 18th century to today; cultural evolution; cognitive arts and humanities; narrative thinking; empathy; and emotions. His visit to Cornell is organized by the University Lectures Committee and the Department of German Studies, with the support of the Institute for German Cultural Studies; the Society for the Humanities; the Cognitive Science Program; the Humanities Lab; and the departments of Comparative Literature, Linguistics, and Romance Studies.
Breithaupt will also participate in a panel, “What is a Humanities Lab?” on March 10 at 5 p.m. in 700 Clark Hall.
There is a growing movement worldwide to use formal, experimental research approaches to explore questions traditionally addressed in the humanities, said Dubreuil, who will appear with Breithaupt on the March 10 panel.
“But it is sometimes easier to reduce complexities, and, as we see with AI today, to prefer ‘generations’ to ‘creations,’” Dubreuil said. “The price to pay if we go further in this direction will be a very one-dimensional, and intellectually impoverished, future.
“We crucially need the right scholarly platforms to allow for a meaningful, and multi-directional, dialogue between the humanities, the arts, and the sciences,” he said. “I founded the Humanities Lab with this key objective in mind.”
Breithaupt’s book, “The Narrative Brain,” was published in German (“Das narrative Gehirn: Was Neuronen erzählen”) in 2022. The English translation was published in February by Yale University Press.
Anette Schwarz, associate professor of German studies (A&S), said the book invites readers to “engage with their own lives as ‘story’ by laying out the narratological basis of our interactions, identities, memories and intergenerational legacies.”
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