Papers by Mette Steenberg
Reading and Mental Health, 2019
Orbis Litterarum, 2018
This article presents the design, methodology, and materials of an inter-Nordic, empirical study ... more This article presents the design, methodology, and materials of an inter-Nordic, empirical study of literary reading among students in teacher education, in which relations between literary style and experiential aspects of literary reading (e.g. empathy and transportation) were assessed empirically. The primary aim of the article is to introduce paradigms and measures from interdisciplinary empirical research on literary reading which is less known in a Nordic context but which is rapidly gaining momentum internationally. The participants in the study read Katherine Mansfield's short story "The Fly" (1922) in the original version versus in a manipulated version in which typical features of literariness (e.g. metaphors and similes) were removed. Combining quantitative measures of empathy, appreciation of literature, and aspects of reading engagement with qualitative methods, the aim is to probe deeper into readers' subjective reading experience.
Reading and Mental Health
This chapter covers innovative qualitative methods which have sought to capture the lived experie... more This chapter covers innovative qualitative methods which have sought to capture the lived experience of reading. Philip Davis, Josie Billington, Grace Farrington, and Fiona Magee show the potential for accessing individual, subjective responses to literary reading—especially ‘breakthrough’ moments where readers break out of default habits of thought—using video-recorded data of reading group sessions and video-assisted interviews. Mette Steenberg demonstrates her use of the micro-phenomenological interview to elicit the ‘felt sense’ and cognitive processes of reading. Thor Magnus Tangeraas describes his investigation of life-changing encounters with literary works through an interview method, inspired by narrative inquiry and the dialogic method of shared reading, which he calls ‘intimate reading’; and Kelda Green discusses the methods she has evolved of tracing the effects on psychological health of private reading, combining personal diaries with face-to-face interviews.
Reading and Mental Health, 2019
This chapter offers three distinct perspectives on the value of—and potential obstacles to—embedd... more This chapter offers three distinct perspectives on the value of—and potential obstacles to—embedding Shared Reading within the treatment options of health professions and services. In this chapter, Ellie Gray surveys a wide range of reading or book-based interventions recently or currently in use in mental health contexts and considers their implications for clinical practice. Grace Farrington articulates the value of a literature-based intervention from the perspective of occupational therapists working with mental health patients in hospital. Mette Steenberg reports on (and assesses the criteria for success of) a collaborative venture of Danish health services, libraries and local government in which people living at risk of mental health issues are referred to reading groups.
This article responds to this special issue's overarching interest in the relation between mo... more This article responds to this special issue's overarching interest in the relation between modes of reading and the experiences of actual readers by analyzing how the specific practice of shared reading facilitates readers’ engagement in literary reading. The article responds both to an under-investigated dimension of the practice of shared reading, that of the role of facilitation, and to a pressing articulated and educational need to develop additional and better methodologies for fostering literary reading engagement, as existing results from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have demonstrated the importance of reading engagement for both academic achievement and social mobility. By linking the notion of engagement within the PISA framework with phenomenologically oriented empirical research on expressive reading and the notion of emergent thinking in existing shared reading research, the article argues for ...
Partiendo de las nociones basicas de la retorica clasica, el objetivo fue el de observar como, po... more Partiendo de las nociones basicas de la retorica clasica, el objetivo fue el de observar como, por una parte, ciertas formas retoricas desbordan el marco de la frase para convertirse en formas textuales, es decir en principio estructurante de todo un texto (produciendo, por ejemplo, textos hipalagicos, oximoricos, etc.). Y, por otra parte, como ciertas “morfologias ”, prototipicas, matematicas, logicas (el circulo, la espiral, el infinito, el espejo, la cita, la paradoja, la version), pueden ir ensanchando el ambito de la retorica textual.
Reading and Mental Health, 2019
The original version of the book was inadvertently published with an incorrect spelling of the au... more The original version of the book was inadvertently published with an incorrect spelling of the author name "Nikolai Ladegaard" in chapter 12 and front matter. The correction to the chapter has been updated with the change.
Variaciones Borges Revista Del Centro De Estudios Y Documentacion Jorge Luis Borges, 1996
Partiendo de las nociones básicas de la retórica clásica, el objetivo fue el de observar cómo, po... more Partiendo de las nociones básicas de la retórica clásica, el objetivo fue el de observar cómo, por una parte, ciertas formas retóricas desbordan el marco de la frase para convertirse en formas textuales, es decir en prin-cipio estructurante de todo un texto (produciendo, ...
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2014
This article presents a case study of a facilitator-lead “shared reading” group with participants... more This article presents a case study of a facilitator-lead “shared reading” group with participants suffering from mental health problems. We argue that the text is the most important agent in creating a reading experience which is both subjective and shared. And we point to relatedness as a function of text agency, and to the role of facilitation in creating text-reader relations. The article also presents a new methodological framework combining physiological data of heart rate variability and linguistic, observational and subjective data. By integrating these distinct data points in our analysis we demonstrate the ways in which the text functions as an agent driving processes of individuation and synchronization respectively. On the basis of linguistic analysis of readers’ responses and interactions we point to the cognitive process of mentalization underlying both individual readings and collective meaning making. At the end we discuss the relation of mentalization to diagnosis an...
Nordic Journal of Arts, Culture and Health
Handbook of Empirical Literary Studies
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Papers by Mette Steenberg