Hannah C Wojciehowski
Professor — Ph.D., 1984, Yale University
Professor of English
Contact
- E-mail: gemelli@austin.utexas.edu
- Phone: 471-8768
- Office: PAR 230
- Office Hours: Fall 2012 TTh 2:00 -3:30 and by appt.
Biography
I am an early modernist and literary theorist who specializes in the history of subjectivity. I completed my Ph.D. at Yale University in the interdisciplinary field of Renaissance Studies (1984). I am currently Professor of English at the University of Texas and an Affiliate of the Program in Comparative Literature.
My research interests are multiple. My 2011 book Group Identity in the Renaissance World explores the history of what I call ‘group subjectivity.” Drawing on the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Anzieu, and the social network theory of Georg Simmel, this book analyzes the unconscious dynamics of group identity formation in a global context, offering a new paradigm for the study of pre-modernity. This study of collective fantasies as the organizing ‘containers’ of groups has applications for other historical periods, as well.
Currently I am working in the emergent field of neurocriticism, studying the phenomena of consciousness, memory, emotion, and cognition as they apply to literature and culture. This interdisciplinary field holds great promise for advancing our shared understanding of the human mind and our social world, and the nature of creativity. In 2010-2011, I collaborated with Italian neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese, one of the discoverers of Mirror Neurons in primate brains, to develop a theory of embodied simulation in literary narratives. My interview with Gallese and our article “How Stories Make Us Feel” was published in California Italian Studies in 2011, and is available online, as well as this website. We are currently collaborating on a longer study of embodied simulation.
I have recently edited Shakespeare’s Cymbeline for the New Kittredge Shakespeare Series, which will be published in 2013 by Focus Pullins. This edition of the play includes performance notes—one of the special features of the series--and relies on film and stage productions of Cymbeline to introduce the reader to one of Shakespeare’s most engaging romances.
My other research interests include the history of gender and sexuality, early modern women’s writing, Tudor and Jacobean theater, travel narratives and 16th-century colonialism, the impact of science and technology on literature, and vice versa, the history and practice of literary criticism and theory, and the writings of French philosopher Michel Foucault.
"Virgil's Brain" photo by Dr. Harvey Sussman, Department of Linguistics, and my Neurolinguistics mentor.
Awards (selected):
- President's Associates Teaching Excellence Award (2011)
- Faculty Fellow, Humanities Institute, University of Texas (2009)
- University Research Institute Faculty Research Award (2008)
- Raymond Dickson Centennial Endowed Teaching Fellowship (2007-2008)
- Dads Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship (2004-2005)
- Rockefeller Resident Fellowship, Institute for the Study of Violence, Survival, and Culture, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (2002)
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, Huntington Library (2001)
- K. Garth Huston and Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellow, Huntington Library (2000)
- Pforzheimer Fellowship, Humanities Research Center, University of Texas (1999)
Affiliated Research/Academic Unit:
Center for Women's and Gender Studies
South Asia Institute
