Karen Simecek
Biographic Data
| ID | 460548 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karen Simecek |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karen |
| FAMILY NAME | Simecek |
| SIGNATURE | SIMECEK K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7058-6567 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Understanding philosophical perspectives of ‘voice’ for better student staff co-creation
Co-creation has widely been accepted as an essential model of student engagement in teaching, learning, and governance in higher education. It is embedded in a number of spaces within the classroom and institutional structures for improving quality and governance, processes and opportunities, for nurturing greater personal engagement with studies and facilitating student success, belonging and inclusion. In this paper, we bring a philosophical le…
Empowering young voices through performing poetry
In this article we examine the potential of writing and performing poetry to empower young people from marginalized backgrounds to participate in the political life of their communities. Our method combines philosophical analysis with the design and implementation of a poetry workshop in Coventry. We then explore how this account informed implementation of the workshop. Finally, we present the results. To unpack the significance of our findings, …
Embodied Voices
This introduction to the special issue of the British Journal of Aesthetics, “Embodied Voices: Aesthetics and Ethics of Bodies in Performance,” explores key themes surrounding the intersection of performance, embodiment, and ethics. It examines the implications of embodying others' lived experiences, the role of the performer's voice in shaping audience reception, and the dynamic relationship between performer, audience, and performance. Addition…
Philosophy of Lyric Voice
Carefully considering the difference in the philosophical potential of page poetry and performance poetry, Karen Simecek argues that it is only by considering them side by side that the unique cognitive value of each can be realised. Focusing on spoken word poetry reveals the importance of voice and embodied words to the differing epistemic rewards of engaging with contemporary works of poetry in both private reading and live performance. This co…
The Poem as Icon
Margaret H. Freeman’s The Poem as Icon addresses the nature and value of poetry, thereby making an important contribution to this developing area of philosophical aesthetics. Her approach is distinctive in that it resists temptation to be drawn away from the specifics of poetry to general discussions of language, art and literature. She achieves this focus by allowing analysis of particular works by poets such as Emily Dickinson, Matthew Arnold a…
Affect Theory
This chapter reviews important works in affect theory published in 2019. The chapter is divided into the following sections: 1. Introduction; 2. Textual Affect, which focuses on Playing with Feeling, by Aubrey Anable, and Affect Theory and Literary Critical Practice, edited by Stephen Ahern; 3. Loss and Longing, which focuses on Bleak Joys, by Matthew Fuller and Olga Goriunova, and Homesickness, by Ryan Hediger; 4. Renewing Theory, which focuses …
Reading for Self-Knowledge
In this article, I offer a response to Rafe McGregor’s Narrative Justice, in particular his notion of lucid phenomenological knowledge. By drawing on a discussion of lyric poetry, I argue that room needs to be made for the notion of perspective, which is more fundamental to our engagement with works of literature than narrative. I end with a suggestion of how to extend McGregor’s account to accommodate the idea of perspective, which I call lucid …
Pielęgnowanie intymności – użycie drugiej osoby gramatycznej w poezji lirycznej
Filozofowie omawiający poezję liryczną często skupiają się na ekspresji pierwszoosobowej jako znaku „liryki”. Zaowocowało to wąskim rozumieniem intymności w poezji, skoncentrowanym na indywidualnym poecie, głosie poetyckim lub czytelniku. W tym artykule przedstawiam sposób, w jaki niektóre utwory liryczne mogą angażować w intymną relację, która łączy czytelnika z głosem z wiersza dzięki użyciu form drugoosobowych. Dla zilustrowania moich twierdze…
Affect Theory
This chapter reviews works in affect theory published in 2018. The chapter is divided into the following sections: 1. Introduction; 2. The Interplay of Feeling and Thinking, which focuses on Rick Furtak’s Knowing Emotions and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order of Things; 3. Narrative of Affect and Affective Narratives, which focuses on Erica L. Johnson’s Cultural Memory, Memorials, and Reparative Writing and Duncan A. Lucas’s Affect Theory, Genr…
New directions for the philosophy of poetry
This article will introduce readers to current debates in the philosophy of poetry. This includes discussion of the need for a philosophy of poetry as distinct from a philosophy of literature, the (in)compatibility of poetry and philosophy, poetic meaning and interpretation, and poetry in relation to affect, emotion and expressiveness, which opens up discussion of wider forms of poetry from spoken word to sign-language poetry. The article ends wi…
Teaching and learning guide for
This digital archive contains an extensive collection of poems.The website also includes a quote-finding service.There are many highlights including an original pamphlet by Louis Zukofsky from 1966, video of Rachel Nwokoro performing 'Green Tea in the Wheelhouse' and audio recordings from some of the best in contemporary UK poetry including Momtaza
Affect Theory
This review examines material published in the field of affect theory in 2017. The chapter begins with Ruth Leys’s The Ascent of Affect, which serves as a useful point of critical reflection for other works published this year. Leys notes that current affect theory takes for granted that affective states are always pre-cognitive and that they play a significant role in shaping belief and motivating action. The apparent consensus is in part due to…
Affect Theory
This chapter reviews important publications in affect theory from 2016. This chapter is divided into the following sections: 1. Introduction; 2. Moving Beyond Emotions to Affective Phenomenology, which focuses on Obstruction (Nick Salvato); 3. Environmental Affect, which focuses on Mirror Affect (Cristina Albu) and Ambient Media (Paul Roquet); 4. Gesture, which focuses on ‘Touching the Button’ (Lindsay Reckson), The Minor Gesture (Erin Manning) a…
Actual Texts, Possible Meanings
Jerome Bruner’s experiment over 30 years ago suggested that imaginative literature had greater affordances for the ‘subjunctification’ of experience by those who heard it read aloud than did transactional prose such as a news article. By ‘subjunctification’, Bruner meant the capacity to use the resource (the short story, for example) to transform one’s experience of the world, to render understanding in more complex ways and to do more than get t…
Affective and Cognitive Responses to Poetry in the University Classroom
In universities, as in mainstream education more widely, cognitive approaches to poetry are often dominant. Far from being irrelevant to the serious study of literature, we argue that eliciting students’ affective responses to poetry can deepen their cognitive understanding and analytical skills. Drawing on recent research in psychology on the relationship between cognition and affect, we show that poetry has particular potential to make us aware…
The Uses of Poetry
What is the value of poetry for learning and development and what are its uses in education today? What role can the poem play not only in formal education, but also in personal development and wel
What is Fiction For
What is the use of literature? Can we make any significant cognitive gains from reading literature? What is the relationship between literary fiction and reality/nature? What is the value of literary criticism? These are the central questions that concern Harrison in his book, What is Fiction For?, where he attempts to present a comprehensive account of the use of literature for the understanding of human life. This is a useful monograph for thos…
The Philosophy of Poetry
This volume of eleven original essays presents a strong case for the need for poetry to be taken seriously by contemporary analytic aesthetics. In particular, it highlights the way in which issues arising from a concern with poetry intersect with a wide variety of debates drawn from across the field of philosophical aesthetics. As John Gibson comments in his introduction, poetry offers a kind of ‘philosophical hub at which the interest of philoso…
Beyond Narrative
The view that narrative artworks can offer insights into our lives, in particular, into the nature of the emotions, has gained increasing popularity in recent years. However, talk of narrative often involves reference to a perspective or point of view, which indicates a more fundamental mechanism at work. In this article, I argue that our understanding of the emotions is incomplete without adequate attention to the perspectival structures in whic…
Beyond Narrative
The view that narrative artworks can offer insights into our lives, in particular, into the nature of the emotions, has gained increasing popularity in recent years. However, talk of narrative often involves reference to a perspective or point of view, which indicates a more fundamental mechanism at work. In this article, I argue that our understanding of the emotions is incomplete without adequate attention to the perspectival structures in whic…
The Poem as Icon
Margaret H. Freeman’s The Poem as Icon addresses the nature and value of poetry, thereby making an important contribution to this developing area of philosophical aesthetics. Her approach is distinctive in that it resists temptation to be drawn away from the specifics of poetry to general discussions of language, art and literature. She achieves this focus by allowing analysis of particular works by poets such as Emily Dickinson, Matthew Arnold a…
Beyond Narrative
The view that narrative artworks can offer insights into our lives, in particular, into the nature of the emotions, has gained increasing popularity in recent years. However, talk of narrative often involves reference to a perspective or point of view, which indicates a more fundamental mechanism at work. In this article, I argue that our understanding of the emotions is incomplete without adequate attention to the perspectival structures in whic…
Actual Texts, Possible Meanings
Jerome Bruner’s experiment over 30 years ago suggested that imaginative literature had greater affordances for the ‘subjunctification’ of experience by those who heard it read aloud than did transactional prose such as a news article. By ‘subjunctification’, Bruner meant the capacity to use the resource (the short story, for example) to transform one’s experience of the world, to render understanding in more complex ways and to do more than get t…
Affective and Cognitive Responses to Poetry in the University Classroom
In universities, as in mainstream education more widely, cognitive approaches to poetry are often dominant. Far from being irrelevant to the serious study of literature, we argue that eliciting students’ affective responses to poetry can deepen their cognitive understanding and analytical skills. Drawing on recent research in psychology on the relationship between cognition and affect, we show that poetry has particular potential to make us aware…
The Uses of Poetry
What is the value of poetry for learning and development and what are its uses in education today? What role can the poem play not only in formal education, but also in personal development and wel
What is Fiction For
What is the use of literature? Can we make any significant cognitive gains from reading literature? What is the relationship between literary fiction and reality/nature? What is the value of literary criticism? These are the central questions that concern Harrison in his book, What is Fiction For?, where he attempts to present a comprehensive account of the use of literature for the understanding of human life. This is a useful monograph for thos…
The Philosophy of Poetry
This volume of eleven original essays presents a strong case for the need for poetry to be taken seriously by contemporary analytic aesthetics. In particular, it highlights the way in which issues arising from a concern with poetry intersect with a wide variety of debates drawn from across the field of philosophical aesthetics. As John Gibson comments in his introduction, poetry offers a kind of ‘philosophical hub at which the interest of philoso…
Affect Theory
This chapter reviews important publications in affect theory from 2016. This chapter is divided into the following sections: 1. Introduction; 2. Moving Beyond Emotions to Affective Phenomenology, which focuses on Obstruction (Nick Salvato); 3. Environmental Affect, which focuses on Mirror Affect (Cristina Albu) and Ambient Media (Paul Roquet); 4. Gesture, which focuses on ‘Touching the Button’ (Lindsay Reckson), The Minor Gesture (Erin Manning) a…
Affect Theory
This review examines material published in the field of affect theory in 2017. The chapter begins with Ruth Leys’s The Ascent of Affect, which serves as a useful point of critical reflection for other works published this year. Leys notes that current affect theory takes for granted that affective states are always pre-cognitive and that they play a significant role in shaping belief and motivating action. The apparent consensus is in part due to…
Affect Theory
This chapter reviews works in affect theory published in 2018. The chapter is divided into the following sections: 1. Introduction; 2. The Interplay of Feeling and Thinking, which focuses on Rick Furtak’s Knowing Emotions and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order of Things; 3. Narrative of Affect and Affective Narratives, which focuses on Erica L. Johnson’s Cultural Memory, Memorials, and Reparative Writing and Duncan A. Lucas’s Affect Theory, Genr…
New directions for the philosophy of poetry
This article will introduce readers to current debates in the philosophy of poetry. This includes discussion of the need for a philosophy of poetry as distinct from a philosophy of literature, the (in)compatibility of poetry and philosophy, poetic meaning and interpretation, and poetry in relation to affect, emotion and expressiveness, which opens up discussion of wider forms of poetry from spoken word to sign-language poetry. The article ends wi…
Teaching and learning guide for
This digital archive contains an extensive collection of poems.The website also includes a quote-finding service.There are many highlights including an original pamphlet by Louis Zukofsky from 1966, video of Rachel Nwokoro performing 'Green Tea in the Wheelhouse' and audio recordings from some of the best in contemporary UK poetry including Momtaza
Reading for Self-Knowledge
In this article, I offer a response to Rafe McGregor’s Narrative Justice, in particular his notion of lucid phenomenological knowledge. By drawing on a discussion of lyric poetry, I argue that room needs to be made for the notion of perspective, which is more fundamental to our engagement with works of literature than narrative. I end with a suggestion of how to extend McGregor’s account to accommodate the idea of perspective, which I call lucid …
Pielęgnowanie intymności – użycie drugiej osoby gramatycznej w poezji lirycznej
Filozofowie omawiający poezję liryczną często skupiają się na ekspresji pierwszoosobowej jako znaku „liryki”. Zaowocowało to wąskim rozumieniem intymności w poezji, skoncentrowanym na indywidualnym poecie, głosie poetyckim lub czytelniku. W tym artykule przedstawiam sposób, w jaki niektóre utwory liryczne mogą angażować w intymną relację, która łączy czytelnika z głosem z wiersza dzięki użyciu form drugoosobowych. Dla zilustrowania moich twierdze…
Affect Theory
This chapter reviews important works in affect theory published in 2019. The chapter is divided into the following sections: 1. Introduction; 2. Textual Affect, which focuses on Playing with Feeling, by Aubrey Anable, and Affect Theory and Literary Critical Practice, edited by Stephen Ahern; 3. Loss and Longing, which focuses on Bleak Joys, by Matthew Fuller and Olga Goriunova, and Homesickness, by Ryan Hediger; 4. Renewing Theory, which focuses …
The Poem as Icon
Margaret H. Freeman’s The Poem as Icon addresses the nature and value of poetry, thereby making an important contribution to this developing area of philosophical aesthetics. Her approach is distinctive in that it resists temptation to be drawn away from the specifics of poetry to general discussions of language, art and literature. She achieves this focus by allowing analysis of particular works by poets such as Emily Dickinson, Matthew Arnold a…
Philosophy of Lyric Voice
Carefully considering the difference in the philosophical potential of page poetry and performance poetry, Karen Simecek argues that it is only by considering them side by side that the unique cognitive value of each can be realised. Focusing on spoken word poetry reveals the importance of voice and embodied words to the differing epistemic rewards of engaging with contemporary works of poetry in both private reading and live performance. This co…
Understanding philosophical perspectives of ‘voice’ for better student staff co-creation
Co-creation has widely been accepted as an essential model of student engagement in teaching, learning, and governance in higher education. It is embedded in a number of spaces within the classroom and institutional structures for improving quality and governance, processes and opportunities, for nurturing greater personal engagement with studies and facilitating student success, belonging and inclusion. In this paper, we bring a philosophical le…
Empowering young voices through performing poetry
In this article we examine the potential of writing and performing poetry to empower young people from marginalized backgrounds to participate in the political life of their communities. Our method combines philosophical analysis with the design and implementation of a poetry workshop in Coventry. We then explore how this account informed implementation of the workshop. Finally, we present the results. To unpack the significance of our findings, …
Embodied Voices
This introduction to the special issue of the British Journal of Aesthetics, “Embodied Voices: Aesthetics and Ethics of Bodies in Performance,” explores key themes surrounding the intersection of performance, embodiment, and ethics. It examines the implications of embodying others' lived experiences, the role of the performer's voice in shaping audience reception, and the dynamic relationship between performer, audience, and performance. Addition…
Philosophy (15 works) · Art (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Poetry (11 works) · Linguistics (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Literature (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Computer Science (8 works)