Cognitive Approaches to Classics

Classics in Groningen is an active participant in developing the diverse and fast-moving field of cognitive classical studies. Our work in this area spans across literature, linguistics and history.

Gerry Wakker’s research on aspect, particles and expressions of emotion combines semantic and pragmatic approaches with methods drawn from discourse analysis. In both respects is its focus often cognitive. Saskia Peels-Matthey works on the interface of linguistics and history. Her NWO Veni-project Polytheism as language studies the identities of ancient Greek gods through insights from cognitive linguistics.

Felix Budelmann publishes on cognitive literary studies. He is the co-editor of Oxford University Press’ Cognitive Classics series, and of the Cognitive Classics website.  Both his monograph in progress, on the experience of the “now” in Greek literature, and an incipient larger project on consciousness, have cognitive dimensions. Remco Regtuit confronts questions of cognition in the context of didactic studies. He is currently researching an article about reading Greek and Latin literature in cola. Albert Joosse works on a wide range of topics in ancient philosophy, with specific interests in the way in which philosophers express their ideas in texts, incl. narrative approaches to philosophical texts and pedagogical pathways.  Jacqueline Klooster has published on cognitive narratology in Hellenistic poetry, such as the experience of love in Theocritus and the possibility of immersive reading in epigram.

Onno van Nijf is interested in the history of emotions and the role of epigraphic language in constructing social relations, empires and connectivity. He has written on the language of emotions and honorary epigraphy. With Gavin Blasdel he is working on the language of emotions and gender in Hellenistic and Imperial Greek epigraphy as part of Anchoring Innovation. In the context of this project, he is working with linguists and archaeologists on a project on ‘common ground’ in Roman Asia Minor.

Christina Williamson uses cognitive studies regarding religion in her analyses of ritual and ritual space. Ways that ritual and space both help structure neural pathways play a part in her examination of religious coordinating mechanisms.