Lisa Zunshine

Lisa Zunshine is an American literary scholar, who publishes in British literature, comparative literature, film/media studies, and cognitive literary theory. She is the author or editor of thirteen books, including Getting Inside Your Head: What Cognitive Science Can Tell Us about Popular Culture,''The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies, and The Secret Life of Literature''.

Early life and education

Zunshine came to the United States as a refugee, from Latvia, when she was twenty-one, and became a U.S. citizen in 1998. She graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2000.

She is professor of English at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, and was a Guggenheim fellow in 2007.

Black Women’s Stories of Everyday Racism: Narrative Analysis for Social Change, with Simone Drake, Jim Phelan, and Robyn Warhol. 2024
The Secret Life of Literature. 2022
Getting Inside Your Head: What Cognitive Science Can Tell Us About Popular Culture. 2012
The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies. 2015
Approaches to Teaching the Works of John Dryden. Co-edited with Jayne Lewis. 2013
Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies. 2010
Acting Theory and the English Stage. 2008
Strange Concepts and the Stories They Make Possible: Cognition, Culture, Narrative. 2008
Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. 2006
Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Samuel Richardson. Co-edited with Jocelyn Harris. 2006
Philanthropy and Fiction. 2006
Bastards and Foundlings: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century England. 2005
Nabokov at the Limits: Redrawing Critical Boundaries. 1999