Prof. Dr. Laura Otis

Project Cognitive Craft: How Four Writers Speak to Readers’ Senses

CV

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

Fellowships

  • 2024-2025 guest scholar at the ZfL with the project Knowledge of Life
  • 2014-2024 guest scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development with the research group History of Emotions
  • 2013 guest scholar at the ZfL
  • 2000-2012 guest scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Jury, Council, and Board Memberships

  • since 2023 forum member, Transdisciplinary Connections in Cognitive and Affect Studies, Modern Language Association
  • Executive Board Member, Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts
  • Editorial Board Member, Configurations

Research Interests

  • Literature and Science
  • Cognitive Literary Studies
  • Literature and the Senses
  • Literature and Emotion
  • 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-Century Literature in English, American, German, Spanish, and French
  • History of Neuroscience, Physiology, and Biology

Publications

Monographs

  • 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

Edited Volumes

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

Fiction

  • 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

Selected Articles

  • Reading as a Rambunctious Boy-Girl, in: Heta M. Pyrhönen and Sander Gilman (eds.): Readers for Life. How Reading and Listening in Childhood Shapes Us. London: Reaktion Books, 2024, 144-152
  • Feeling Environments. Emotions beyond Human Interiority. By 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, and Lalita Pandit Hogan (eds.): The Routledge Companion to Literature and Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2022, 15-25

Selected 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 June 2024
  • The Sound of Genocide. We Hear the Truths We Deny. Psychology Today. 13 March 2024

Lectures

Selected Lectures

  • Input from Literary Studies, Workshop "Writers, Scholars, Scientists. Experimental Encounters with Literary Depictions of Science. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler." Hanseatic Institute for Advanced Studies. 26.11.2024
  • Merging Scientific and Literary Craft Knowledge. The Case of Multimodal Imagery. University of Regensburg. 18.5.2024