Affiliations:

• Research Constellation: Neuroaesthetics & Neurocultures
• College of Humanities: Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis,  Literary and Cultural Analysis

Tim Yaczo is Docent in Literary and Cultural Analysis. He teaches in the Cultural Analysis bachelor, master's, and research master's programmes.

Brains With Character

"Brains with Character: Reading and Writing Neuronarrative" tracks the concept of neuronarrative by analyzing the reciprocal and catalytic relationships between neuroscience and literary media. Crucial to understanding the contemporary stakes in these two cultural endeavors is how their relationships implicate ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ as concepts, operations, and activities.  From the protagonist struggling with a brain tumor, to the villain who one comes to discover acts out of a neurochemical imbalance, stories play out cultural, technological, and highly personal excitements and anxieties about the place and importance of brain knowledge today. They invite new literacies of readers, by demanding one learns from the vocabulary of scanning machines and the latest anatomies, as well as encouraging one to think through and with accounts of everyday life that centralize the significance of brain activity.

Five objects help me encounter the concept of neuronarrative and productively destabilize it beyond the frame of genre: two fictional novels, each about a damaged brain in some way; a scientific report about a University of Iowa experiment involving the location of fear in the brain; a popular science book intended for school administrators and teachers to alter their classrooms according to brain science; and finally, a short story written on Twitter that encourages one to experience each tweet as the recorded mental thoughts of the protagonist.

2016

• “Literacy and Plasticity: Reading Neutral Metamorphosis in Literary Fiction.” Worlding the Brain: Patterns, Rhythms, Narratives in Neuroscience and the Humanities, University of Amsterdam, 17 March 2016.

2014

• “#BlackBoxes: Opening Brains, Narrating Networks.” Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association national conference, Chicago, 17 April 2014.
• “Fears of Amygdalae from Iowa City: Neurons, Narrative, Affect.” Affect and Inquiry conference, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 28 March 2014.

2012

• “God Has Metastasized.” Cultural Studies Association of Australasia annual conference, University of Sydney, Sydney, 6 December 2012.
• “Vexing Synaptic Sexing.” Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis International Workshop, University of Amsterdam, 30 March 2012.
• “Doubt and the Body In-Between.” National Institute for Cultural Analysis, Leiden University, 13 January 2012.

• "Fear and Panic in Iowa City: Narratives, Affects, and Amygdalae."  Configuations 23.3 (Winter 2015): 377-97.
• "¿Y Tú, Qué Has Hecho De Mis Ritmos? The Buena Vista Social Club and the Repeating Island." Off Beat: Pluralizing Rhythm, Vol. 26 of Thamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex, and Race (2013): 27-42.