NeuroHumanities at Purdue
Founded in 2008, the Center for NeuroHumanities is a multi-departmental coalition dedicated to exploring the nexus where humanities and cognitive theory come together. Drawing on discourses in the sciences and the humanities, the Center promotes and develops research that explores not only an empirical understanding of the mind as found in Psychology, Biology, Neuroscience, and Information Theory, but also its theoretical development in Philosophy, and its representation in literature, and the discursive relationship between all of the "kinds of minds." The Center also encourages other scientific, quantitative, and consilient approaches to literary theory and performance studies, including, but not limited to, evolutionary and anthropological approaches.
At Purdue, affliiates from multiple fileds make the Center an interdisciplinary endeavor that provides an organizing structure within and across existing departments and courses at Purdue, as well as offering its own unique courses.
Additionally, the Center invites and hosts speakers from a variety of related fields, from both the extended national and international academic community, as well as from Purdue.
NEW UNDERGRADUATE COURSE!
LC 26500, Introduction to the NeuroHumanities, will be offered about once per year and is open to students of all majors (no prereqs). LC 26500 introduces students to the main developments in the neurohumanities particularly since the 1990s, with focus on cognitive literary and cultural studies. The course emphasizes not only the role of psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and other STEM and social scientific fields in interpreting cultural artifacts, but also how literary and cultural studies contribute significantly to those fields. Students will learn skills which will enable them to consider and interpret works of art, broadly defined, through a highly interdisciplinary cognitive-studies lens as they explore how the humanities are intricately intertwined with the sciences.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Spring 2026 - Guest Lecture by Professor Fritz Breithaupt, director of the Experimental Humanities Lab at the University of Pennsylvania (date, time, and venue TBA)
PAST EVENTS (Selected)
Fall 2022 - Society for Literature, Science and the Arts Conference, "Reading Minds: Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, and the Reading Human," Purdue University, October 6-9, 2022
Fall 2019 - Colloquium: "Measuring the Impact of Narrative, Humanities, and the Arts: A Showcase of Current Research at Purdue," School of Languages and Cultures, November 12, 2019