Guillemette Bolens is Professor of Medieval and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She is the author of several books, including The Style of Gestures: Embodiment and Cognition in Literary Narrative (Johns Hopkins UP, 2012) and Kinesic Humor: Literature, Embodied Cognition, and the Dynamics of Gesture (OUP, 2021). Her work has been published in Poetics Today, Cahiers de narratologie, Studia Neophilologica, and Cogent Arts & Humanities.

Contents

List of Contributors

Introduction: What is Kinesic Intelligence?

Guillemette Bolens

Chapter 1: The Role of Kinesic Intelligence in Child Language Development

Aliyah Morgenstern

Chapter 2: Kinesic Intelligence in the Care Relationship: The Contribution of Clinical Psychology to Healthcare Provided to Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer

Élise Ricadat

Chapter 3: Kinesic Intelligence and Historical Research: Gestural Communication at the Court of Henry VIII

Greg Walker

Chapter 4: Kinesic Intelligence in Common Law Reasoning

Maksymilian Del Mar

Chapter 5: Reading as Embodied Simulation: Literary Techniques and Intersubjective Collaboration

Paul B. Armstrong

Chapter 6: Why Love a Cat? An Anthropology of Human-Feline Kinesic Engagement On- and Off-line

Ellen Hertz

Chapter 7: Material Scent: Textiles beyond Touch

Jessica Hemmings

Index

This research collection showcases how kinesic intelligence is fundamental to human communication and our ability to produce complex meaning, exploring its manifestations across a range of humanities disciplines, and connecting our past with our social and cultural future.