Embodied Memory

Verifying Visual Properties in Sentence Verification Facilitates Picture Recognition Memory

by Diane Pecher

Pecher, D., Zanolie, K., & Zeelenberg, R. (2007). Verifying visual properties in sentence verification facilitates picture recognition memory. Experimental Psychology, 54, 173-179.

According to the perceptual symbols theory (Barsalou, 1999), sensorimotor simulations underlie the representation of... more According to the perceptual symbols theory (Barsalou, 1999), sensorimotor simulations underlie the representation of concepts. We investigated whether recognition memory for pictures of concepts was facilitated by earlier representation of visual properties of those concepts. During study, concept names (e.g., apple) were presented in a property verification task with a visual property (e.g., shiny) or with a nonvisual property (e.g., tart). Delayed picture recognition memory was better if the concept name had been presented with a visual property than if it had been presented with a nonvisual property. These results indicate that modality-specific simulations are used for concept representation.

Grounding Cognition: The Role of Perception and Action in Memory, Language, and Thinking

by Diane Pecher

Pecher, D. & Zwaan, R. A. (Eds.). (2005). Grounding Cognition: The role of perception and action in memory, language, and thinking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Journal Special Issue: Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies

by Karen Soldatic

CALL FOR PAPERS:
Journal Special Issue: Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies
more CALL FOR PAPERS:
Journal Special Issue: Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies

Disability and Colonialism: (dis)encounters and anxious intersectionalities

Guest Editors: Shaun Grech (Manchester Metropolitan University) & Karen Soldatic (University of New South Wales)

We are pleased to announce that we will be guest editing a special edition entitled Disability and Colonialism: (dis)encounters and anxious intersectionalities on behalf of the established refereed journal Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.

The aim of this special issue is to position disability within the colonial (the real and imagined), through which to explore a range of (often anxious) intersectionalities as disability is theorised, constructed, and lived as a post/neocolonial condition. While postcolonial theory and associated fields (e.g. critical theory, cultural studies etc.) have engaged with race, gender and ethnicity in the exploration of themes of identity, representation, space, historicity and the neocolonial, they have almost wholly bypassed disabled people- paradoxically limited to the subjectification of the able-bodied, or rather disembodying colonialism. Westerncentric fields of study such as disability studies often remain detached from the global South, the histories, contexts and cultures of these specific geopolitical spaces, and how disability is ontologically constructed and lived through a history replete with signifiers of power and empire and that frame the global. While some have adopted colonialism as a metaphor for the experience of disability (see for example Shakespeare, 2000), of colonized bodies by the medical profession, the colonial encounter per se, its creation of and implications for the disabled subject, remains inadequately theorised. In turn, disability is persistently removed from history and any contemplation of the post or neocolonial and efforts (discursive or material) at decolonizing these spaces and those within.

The special issue aims to transcend disciplinary, epistemological, methodological, spatial and historical boundaries. Engaging indigenous, post/neocolonial, disability studies, critical theory, psychology, Latin American Cultural Studies, and a range of other perspectives and literatures, and prioritising voices from the global South, we invite authors to engage in critical debate around colonialism to explore a range of thematic concerns (not exclusively):

• Colonial representations and the construction of the disabled body and mind
• The violence and disablism of colonialism
• Intersections of race, ethnicity, culture, gender and disability
• Empire and the domestication of bodies: globalisation, economics and beyond
• Disabled identities, metaphors and language, and their roles in subjugation
• From the colonial to the post/neocolonial: disability and contemporary lineages of imperialism
• Social identities and visions of disability
• Colonial medicalisation: identifying, labelling and ‘treating’ the disabled body
• The Christianising mission, biblical renditions and the disabled subject
• Decolonizing epistemologies, practices and lives: renegotiating power and contemplating global justice

We encourage authors to engage work on Southern theory and movements and approaches prioritising and promoting Southern epistemologies and counter-hegemonic knowledges emerging from struggles for justice.

Those wishing to submit an article, please email your full manuscript to both Shaun Grech (S.Grech@mmu.ac.uk) and Karen Soldatic (ajks123@bigpond.com). Please insert ‘Submission for Disability and Colonialism Special Issue’ in the subject line. Manuscripts will be sent anonymously for double peer review, and comments and recommendations relayed to authors through the editors.

Articles should not exceed 8,000 words in length, and include a 300 word abstract. The journal style guide is available here: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1369-801X&linktype=44.

Manuscripts should be submitted by no later than: 1st January 2013

The Waitress -- on Affect, Method and (Re) Presentation

by Emma Dowling

Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies 12 (2): 109-117

This article engages the embodied experiences of the waitress with the question of how to (re)present these in their... more This article engages the embodied experiences of the waitress with the question of how to (re)present these in their affective dimensions. In service work, the body needs to be able to combine conflicting capacities; to lure, entice and satisfy on the one hand and to be resilient, fast and astute on the other. If an attention to affect allows a shift from the question of what a phenomenon means or represents, to that of what a phenomenon does, then the ways affect is analyzed and narrated are necessarily bound up with questions of method and (re)presentation. This piece performs the waitress in an analysis of her affective and embodied labor in the process of how she experiences and makes sense of it.

Sensing the Story: Structure and Improvisation In Writing for Performance

by rea dennis

Embodied memory in the museum

by Ross Wilson

The bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade has ensured that museums have sought to find new ways in which to... more The bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade has ensured that museums have sought to find new ways in which to represent the often painful history of the British enslavement of individuals from Africa. Locating a means of relaying this history to a diverse audience in an accessible and respectful manner is the issue that museums have been handling in 2007.

Within the various displays and exhibitions in museums, objects, audiovisual displays, narratives and label texts have been designed and redesigned to fulfil this objective. Whilst many institutions have provided stimulating and provoking representations of the past a survey of museum displays reveals a particular absence in these efforts: a notion of embodiment.

It is argued in this article that museums have relied too heavily on the visual in their efforts to depict the history and legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. In doing this they have neglected the tendency of audiences to think and remember with their bodies, through their bodies, and thereby formulate an embodied memory.