Productive Dialogues across Disciplines: Literature and Empathy Studies

Rethinking Empathy through Literature critiques the dominance of a “social neuroscience” version of empathy that has emerged in the past decade. It stresses the evolving definitions of empathy and the concepts’ interdisciplinary nature — located somewhere among the fields of psychology, moral philosophy, and aesthetics. Hammond and Kim successfully demonstrate that literary critics benefit from multi-disciplinary approaches to empathy. They also critique attempts to consolidate the definition into one academic area. Keeping disciplinary boundaries about empathy is less productive than collaboration between researchers.