Karin Kukkonen insegna narratologia, approcci cognitivi alla letteratura e studi sui fumetti. È professoressa di Letterature Comparate all'Università di Oslo in Norvegia. Ha conseguito il dottorato di ricerca presso le Università di Tampere e Mainz (co-tutela) e ottenuto borse post-dottorato presso l'Università di Turku e l'Università di Oxford. Nel 2021, Kukkonen è stato visiting professor a La Sapienza.
Sulle strategie di narrazione nei fumetti nel XXI secolo, ha pubblicato una monografia, Contemporary Comics Storytelling (University of Nebraska Press, 2013) e un manuale, Studying Comics and Graphic Novels (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), oltre a molteplici articoli sull'argomento.
I progetti successivi di Kukkonen hanno riguardato una prospettiva diacronica sulla narratologia e la storia del romanzo. I suoi progetti di post-dottorato all'Università di Turku e all'Università di Oxford hanno portato a due pubblicazioni monografiche: A Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics (Oxford University Press, 2017) e How the Novel Found its Feet: 4E Cognition and Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2019).
All'Università di Oslo, Kukkonen guida l'iniziativa interdisciplinare "Literature, Cognition and Emotions" (2019-2023) lavorando all'interfaccia tra studi letterari, psicologia e linguistica. Nel 2019, è stata premiata con il premio per giovani ricercatori dell'Università di Oslo.
Le sue monografie più recenti sono Probability Designs: Literature and Predictive Processing (Oxford University Press, 2020) e With Bodies: Embodied Cognition and Narrative Theory (con Marco Caracciolo; Ohio State University Press, 2021).
Attualmente, Kukkonen lavora sulla creatività letteraria dalla prospettiva degli approcci cognitivi embodied e probabilistici alla letteratura. La sua indagine spazia da interviste con autori contemporanei a ricostruzioni di giochi letterari della prima età moderna, in particolare giochi di narrazione (come quelli che troviamo nel Decameron).
PUBBLICAZIONI
Monografie
2021 (with Marco Caracciolo) With Bodies: Narrative Theory and Embodied Cognition. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
2020 Probability Designs: Literature and Predictive Processing New York: Oxford University Press.
Reviewed in: Norsk litteraturvitenskapelig tidsskrift (24.1; 2021); Samlaren (142; 2022)
2019 4E Cognition and Eighteenth-Century Fiction: How the Novel Found its Feet. New York: Oxford University Press.
Reviewed in: Seminar (58.1 2022); The Year’s Work in English Studies (2021); Studies in English Literature (60.4; 2020); Eighteenth-Century Studies (55.1; 2021); Substance (50,1; 2020); Eighteenth-Century Fiction (33.1; 2020); The Review of English Studies (71.3; 2020);
2017 A Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics: Neoclassicism and the Novel. New York: Oxford University Press.
Reviewed in: Studies in English Literature (60.4; 2020); Modern Philology (116.1; 2018); Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (44.1; 2021); Choice (55.4; 2017); Norsk litteraturvitenskapelig tidsskrift (21.2; 2018)
2013 Contemporary Comics Storytelling. Frontiers of Narrative Series. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Reviewed in: The Year’s Work in English (95.1; 2016); European Journal of American Studies (2016); European Comic Art (9.1; 2016); Choice (51.7; 2014)
Libri di testo
2013 Studying Comics and Graphic Novels. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
2010 (with Matteo Stocchetti). Critical Media Analysis: An Introduction for Media Professionals. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Edited Collections and Special Issues
2022 (with Sibylle Baumbach) “Attention and Mind-Wandering in Literature” Diegesis 11.2
2019 (with Anezka Kuzmicova, Steen Ledet Christiansen and Merja Polvinen). “The Place of the Cognitive in Literary Studies.” Cogent Arts and Humanities 6.1
2018 (with Stefan Iversen and Gunther Martens). ENN5 Special Issue. Frontiers of Narrative Studies 4.1
2018 (with Jan Alber, Marco Caracciolo, Stefan Iversen and Henrik Skov Nielsen). “Unnatural and Cognitive Perspectives on Literary Studies: A Theory Crossover” Special Issue of Poetics Today 39.3
2014 (with Marco Caracciolo). “Second-Generation Approaches to Cognitive Literary Study” Special Issue of Style 48.3.
2014 (with Terence Cave and Olivia Smith). “Reading Literature Cognitively”. Special Issue of Paragraph 37:1.
2011 (with Sonja Klimek). Metalepsis in Popular Culture. Narratologia Series. Berlin: DeGruyter.
2011 (with Matteo Stocchetti). Images in Use: Towards the Critical Analysis of Visual Communication. DAPSAC Series. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Articoli in riviste
in corso di pubblicazione
“Distracted or Mind-Wandering? Readers’ Multiple Engagements in Probability Designs” Cahiers voor Literaturvetenschap
“Contingency Traps: The Role of Form in Creative Processes” Neohelicon
2022 (with Sibylle Baumbach) “Mind-Wandering and Attention in Literature” Diegesis 11.2: 1-17.
2022 (with Ylva Østby) “Readers During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Reading Choices, Habits and Emotional Experiences” Scientific Study of Literature
2022 (with Eva von Contzen and Dorothee Birke) “Chrononarratology: Modelling Historical Change for Narratology” Narrative 30.1: 26-46.
2021 “Reading, Fast and Slow.” Poetics Today 42.2: 173-191.
2021 “Zukunft als Vergangenheit: Über Zangenbewegungen im zeitgenössischen Erzählen” Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte 15.3: 131-137.
2021 (with Federico Pianzola, Giuseppe Riva and Fabrizia Mantolini) “Presence, Flow and Narrative Absorption: An Interdisciplinary Theoretical Exploration with a New Spatio-Temporal Setting Based on Predictive Processing” EU Open Science
2020 “Does Cognition Translate? Predictions, Plot and World Literature” Poetics Today 41.2: 243-260.
2020 “The Speed of Plot: Narrative Acceleration and Deceleration” Orbis Litterarum 75.2: 73-85.
2019 “Reading by Proxy: A Visit to the Literary Archive” Cogent Arts and Humanities 6.1 (online)
2019 “Exploring Inner Perceptions: Interoception, Literature and Mindfulness” Journal of Consciousness Studies 26.11-12: 107-132.
2019 (with Ana Vogrincic Cepic) “Practices and Technologies Across Two Reading Revolutions: Reading the Eighteenth Century into the Twenty-First”. International Journal of the Book 17.1: 27-37.
2019 (with Regina Fabry) “Reconsidering the Mind-Wandering Reader: Predictive Processing, Probability Designs, and Enculturation“ Frontiers in Psychology doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02648
2018 (with Henrik Skov Nielsen) “Fictionality: Cognition and Exceptionality” Poetics Today 39.3: 473-494.
2018 “A Moving Target: Towards a Feminist Cognitive Narratology” Textual Practice 32.6: 973-989.
2018 “The Curse of Realism: Cognitive Narratology and the Historical Dimension” Partial Answers 16.2: 291-302.
2017 “Adventures in Duck-Rabbitry: Multi-Stable Elements in Graphic Narrative” Narrative 25.3: 342-358.
2016 “When Social Minds Get Into Trouble: The Narrative Dynamics of Externalist and Internalist Perspectives” Orbis Litterarum 71.4: 307-327.
2015 “’A Prayer for Indifference’: Die Grenzen der Gefühlskultur” Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert 39.2: 186-195.
2014 “Bayesian Narrative: Probability, Plot and the Shape of the Fictional World.” Anglia 123.4:720-739.
2014 “Presence and Prediction: The Embodied Reader's Cascades of Cognition.” Style 48.3: 367-384.
2014 (with Marco Caracciolo). “Introduction: What is the Second Generation.” Style 48.3: 261-274.
2014 “Quixotic Reasoning: Counterfactuals, Causation and Literary Storyworlds.” Paragraph 37.1: 47-61.
2014 “The Minds Behind the Mask: Reading for Character in the Masquerade.” Neophilologus 98.1: 161-176.
2013 “Flouting Figures: Uncooperative Narration in the Fiction of Eliza Haywood” Language and Literature 22.3: 205-218.
2011 “Comics Storytelling as a Test Case for Transmedial Narratology.” SubStance 40.1: 34-51.
2010 “Navigating Infinite Earths: Readers, Mental Models and the Multiverse of Superhero Comics.” Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies 2: 39-58.
Reprinted in Hatfield, Heer and Worchester, eds. The Superhero Reader. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2013. 155-169.
(volume nominated for the 2014 Eisner Award as Best Scholarly/Academic Work)
2008 “Beyond Language: Metaphor and Metonymy in Comics Storytelling.” English Language Notes 46.2: 89-98.
2008 “Popular Cultural Memory: Comics, Communities and Context Knowledge.” Nordicom Review 29.2: 261-274.
Capitoli di libri
in corso di stampa “Cognitive Formalism: Or, How Presence Machines are Built” in eds. Patricia Pisters and Stephan Besser. Worlding the Brain
“Multilingual Citizens of the World: Literary Fiction in Norwegian Book Collections in the Eighteenth Century” in ed. Aina Nøding, Nordic Citizens of the World.
(chapter editor; with Ros Ballaster, Guillaume Dumas, Henry Keazor and Michael Wheeler) “Creativity and Contingency” in eds. Anne Duprat and Alison James. Figures of Chance.
2022 “The Experience of Narrative: Aesthetics and Embodiment” in eds. Paul Dawson and Maria Mäkelä, The Routledge Companion to Narrative Theory. London: Routledge: 397-408.
2022 “Erzählung: Der Roman und Formen des Ganzen” in eds. Eva Geulen und Claude Haas, Formen des Ganzen. Wallstein. 343-362.
2020 “The Self and Subjectivity: Why the Enlightenment is Relevant for Posthumanism” In: Mads Rosendahl Thompsen and Jacob Wamberg (eds). The Bloomsbury Handbook of Posthumanism. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 25-34.
2020 “Kognitiv litteraturforskning: Att se sig själv tänka” In: Sigrid Cullhed-Schottenius, Andreas Hedberg and Johan Svedjedal (eds). Litteraturvetenskap II. Stockholm: Studentlitteratur. 247-263.
2019 “The Literary Designer Environments of Eighteenth-Century Jesuit Poetics” In: Miranda Anderson, George Rousseau and Michael Wheeler (eds.) The History of Distributed Cognition 3: Enlightenment and Romanticism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 187-203.
2018 “Genre Fiction in the Graphic Novel: The Case of Science Fiction” In: Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey and Stephen Tabachnick (eds). The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 476-491.
2018 “The Fully Extended Mind” In: Zara Dinnen and Robyn Warhol (eds.) The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Narrative Theories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
2017 (with Marco Caracciolo, Cécile Guédon and Sabine Müller) "The Promise of an Embodied Narratology: Integrating Cognition, Representation and Interpretation" In: John Pier and Philippe Roussin (eds.) Emergent Vectors of Narratology. Berlin: De Gruyter, 435-459.
2017 “Problems of Tellability in German Eighteenth-Century Poetics and Novel Writing” In: Liisa Steinby and Aino Mäkikalli (eds.) Narrative Concepts. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 177-189.
2017 "Fantastic Cognition." In: Michael Burke and Emily Troscianko (eds.) Dialogues between Literature and Cognition. New York: Oxford University Press, 151-167.
2016 "Bayesian Bodies: The Predictive Dimension of Embodied Cognition." In: Peter Garrett (ed.) The Embodied Mind in Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan: 153-169.
2016 "Samuel Richardson Among the Ancients and Moderns." In: Paddy Bullard and Alexis Tadié (eds.) Ancients and Moderns in Early Modern Europe: Comparative Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford Studies in the Enlightenment. 229-242.
2013 “Space, Time and Causality in Graphic Narratives: An Embodied Approach.” In Daniel Stein & Jan- Noël Thon (eds.) From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels: Contributions to the Theory and History of Graphic Narrative. Narratologia. Berlin: DeGruyter, 49-66.
(volume received "honourable mention" at 2015 Perkins Prize)
2013 “Adam Smith Meets the Devil: Demonic Pacts and Moral Sentiments in the Gothic Novel.” In Jakob Lothe & Jeremy Hawthorn (eds.) Narrative Ethics. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 183-196.
2013 “Form as a Pattern of Thinking: Cognitive Poetics and New Formalism.” In Verena Theile and Linda Tredennick (eds.) New Formalism and Literary Theory. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 159-176.
2011 “Metalepsis in Popular Culture: An Introduction.” In Kukkonen and Klimek (eds.), 1-21.
2011 “Metalepsis in Comics and Graphic Novels.” In Kukkonen and Klimek (eds.), 213-231.
2011 “The Map, the Mirror and the Simulacrum: Visual Communication and the Question of Power.” in Stocchetti & Kukkonen (eds.), 55-67.
2010 “Warren Ellis' Planetary: The Archeology of Superheros.” In Joyce Goggins and Dan Hassler-Forrest (eds.) The Rise and Reason of Comics and Graphic Novels. Jefferson: McFarland, 154-163.
2010 “Alan Moore's Promethea: The Master Narrative Today.” In Claudine Armand et al. (ed. Créatures et créateurs de Prométhée. Nancy: Presses universitaires de Nancy, 237-249.
2010 (with Anja Müller-Wood) “Whatever Happened to All the Heroes: British Perspectives on Superheroes.” In Mark Berninger, Jochen Ecke & Gideon Haberkorn (eds.) Comics as a Nexus of Cultures: Essays on the Interplay of Media, Disciplines and International Perspectives. Jefferson: McFarland, 153-163.
2010 (with Gideon Haberkorn) “Workshop 1: Toward a Toolbox of Comics Studies.” In Berninger, Ecke & Haberkorn, 237-245.
2009 “Textworlds and Metareference in Comics.” In Werner Wolf (ed.) Metareference AcrossMedia: Theory and Case Studies. Amsterdam Rodopi, 499-514.
Open Peer Commentary
2022 (with Federico Pianzola, Guiseppe Riva and Fabrizia Mantovani). “Am I present in imaginary worlds? Intentions, actions and flow in mediate experiences and fiction.“ Brain and Behavioral Sciences 45: e293.
Encyclopedia/Handbook Entries
2019 “Handlung und Handlungslogik: Frühe Neuzeit.” In: Eva von Contzen und Stefan Tilg (ed.) Handbuch Historische Narratologie. Stuttgart: Verlag J.B. Metzler.262-271.
CV Kukkonen 5
2017 “Handlung / Plot.” In: Martin Huber & Wolf Schmid (eds.) Erzählen. Grundthemen der Literaturwissenschaft. Berlin: DeGruyter. 278-298.
2016 “Bill Willingham” In: Donald Haase and Anne Duggan (eds.) The Encyclopedia of Folk and Fairy Tales. 2nd edition. Wayne State University Press.
2015 “Continental Sources of Criticism” and “Decorum” In: Gary Day and Jack Lynch (eds.) The Encyclopedia of British Literature, 1660-1789. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
2014 “Plot” In: Peter Hühn, Jan Christoph Meister, John Pier & Wolf Schmid (eds.) The Handbook of Narratology. 2nd edition. 2 vols. Berlin: deGruyter. Vol.2: 706-719. Also online at The Living Handbook of Narratology.
2014 “Comics” In: Michael Kelly (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Aethetics. 2nd edition. 6 Vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vol. 2, 106-109.
2014 “Web Comics” In: Marie-Laure Ryan, Lori Emerson and Benjamin J. Robinson (eds.) The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 521-524.
2009-2011 “Watchmen”, “The Sandman”, “The Graphic Novel”, “Superhero Comics” and “V for Vendetta” In: The Literary Encyclopedia. Online resource.