A major intervention in the field of dream studies has just been published, edited by Marco Bernini and Ben Alderson-Day from our Institute for Medical Humanities.
Dreams, Narrative and Liminal Cognition is a collection of essays bringing together perspectives from science, social science, and the arts and humanities to shed light on the experiential qualities of dreams and the insights they disclose for our understanding of consciousness, the self, and our relationship with reality.
The volume contains contributions from cognitive scientists, psychiatrists, narrative theorists, philosophers of mind, theologians and artists.
It also presents the findings of an interdisciplinary study of dreaming, which collected over 300 dream reports from members of the public.
Innovating the study of dreams
Cognitive research on dreams has experienced a resurgence in recent years.
Marco Bernini, Associate Professor of Cognitive Literary Studies in our Department of English Studies, said: “Despite recent neuroscientific advances in dream science, understanding the immersive and narrative qualities of dreams, their links with other imaginary and hallucinatory states, and how our experiences and thoughts about reality permeate our dreams and vice versa requires an interdisciplinary approach.
“This volume of essays combines multiple methodologies to chart the conceptual and phenomenological landscape of dreams and liminal states of sleep cognition.”
Ben Alderson-Day, Professor in our Department of Psychology, added: “Dream research is on the cusp of a new wave, and the contributions of this collection illustrate vividly how fruitful working across disciplines can be for our understanding of dreams, narrative and reality.”
Peter Garratt, Head of Department in our Department of English Studies, said: “This is an extraordinary volume, setting exciting new directions in the field of dream research.
“Fascinating for its interest in the permeability of our waking and nocturnal lives, this book shows why the interdisciplinary science of dreaming requires a rigorous understanding of narrative, fiction and imagination if it is to access this most immersive and idiosyncratic of human experiences.”
Fringe Cognitions
Dreams, Narrative and Liminal Cognition is a major output of our Institute for Medical Humanities’ research strand on ‘Fringe Cognitions’, which explored liminal, ephemeral experience.
It was driven by Threshold Worlds – an interdisciplinary research project on dreams and dreaming based at Durham in 2020 with funding from the Institute of Advanced Study and Wellcome through the Institute for Medical Humanities.
The publication further consolidates Durham as a leading institution in the fields of cognitive literary studies and cognitive narratology, and in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of human experience.
Dreams, Narrative and Liminal Cognition is published by Oxford University Press.
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