Embodiment and Identity Readings

I'll be reading things like the following (soon to be ordered and put into APA format)

• The Cyborg's Dilemma: Progressive Embodiment in Virtual Environments
• How We Became Posthuman : Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics
  by N. Katherine Hayles
• Narrative As Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media (Parallax: Re-Visions of Culture and Society) by Marie-Laure Ryan
• Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet by Lisa Nakamura
• Designing for a Digital World (Architectural Design) by Neil Leach

With Katie

These are the readings that Katie Clinton (who is looking at some of the same things I am) suggested I read.

1. How We Became Posthuman : Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics by N. Katherine Hayles.
   • Katie says "you could just read this all semester and get a good understanding of it." Start with chapter 6 and 8.
2. Situated Language And Learning: A Critique Of Traditional Schooling by James Paul Gee
• Entire book.
3. Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction by Paul Dourish.
   About the embodied interface. Katie's very excited about this now. It's about the perception action routines --we use our senses and respond both in virtual worlds and in RL.
• Start with chapter 4 -- a review of Phenomenology, definition of embodiment, etc.
• Chapters 1-3
• Chapters 5-8
4. Katie Clinton's proposal to get an idea of her approach/understanding (a good summary)
5. Embodied Cognition: A Field Guide by M.L. Anderson (2003)
6. Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence by Andy Clark
   chapter 3 "Plastic Brains, Hybrid Minds"
7. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience by Francisco J. Varela, Evan T. Thompson, Eleanor Rosch -- Francisco J. Valera
   especially chapters 8,9
8. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I. by Hubert L. Dreyfus
   (Katie hasn't read yet, about Heidegger's "Being and Time")
9. The Body and the Self -- eds. Jose Luis Bermúdez, Anthony Marcel, Naomi, Eilan
   (don't get yet) or choose one or two chapters
10. Philosophy in the Flesh : The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakoff, Mark Johnson
11. Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action by Pierre Bourdieu
12. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Merleau-Ponty
    embodied cognition
13. The Body in the Mind : The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason by Mark Johnson

Other Selections

These are ideas and suggestions that come from others, or from the readings themselves.

• Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and the Human Sciences) by Gregory Bateson

English Department Group

There are some folks in the English Department who are starting a reading group on embodiment that will meet on Friday afternoons in the English department library. These are the readings they're looking at doing (and Justin's comments).

• Shakespeare's Brain: Reading with Cognitive Theory by Mary Thomas Crane
  Her introduction is a handy survey of major works in the field and a useful framing of cognitive issues in a lit-crit framework.
• Philosophy in the Flesh by Lakoff and Johnson.
  I see you have that one too. Any ideas on good excerpts from it? Was also thinking _Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things_ by Lakoff and Johnson, but may be too much overlap between the two books.
• The Symbolic Species by Terance Deacon.
  An evolutionary anthropologist's take on the "co-evolution" of langauge and the brain, and some interesting theories about how symbol and reference function in the brain.
• Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind by Gerald Edelman.
  Haven't read much of it, but it seems fascinating so far. It's a neurologist's take on the embodied mind and has some useful stuff about how the products of subjectivities disguise themselves as rational, schematic, objective bodies of knowledge.
• Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio
  Useful introduction to the biological basis of the mind and some good stuff on emotion, but doesn't delve as deep into the theoretical stuff. Haven't decided how good a fit it is.
• And for reference I was going to put The Companion to Cognitive Science by Blackwell books on reserve. It's a nice, phone-book size reference with short entries (many written by the writers we're discussing) summarizing various aspects of the field, with lots of useful references and indexes.
• Was also kicking around the idea of screening Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which is a creative exploration of some of the ideas we're discussing, but that's just a notion right now.

 

My reading notes, and applications to my research, are currently all on my blog.