Varieties of Empathy in Science, Art and Culture
Particpants
Robert Brain is an Assistant Professor of History at UBC. He is an historian of science and medicine engaged in research concerning experimental physiology, aesthetics, and the arts of modernism around 1900. His work provides a bridge between the history of science, philosophy, and the aesthetic interests of the workshop. Relevant publication: R. Brain, "The Pulse of Modernism: Experimental Physiology and Aesthetic Avant-Gardes Circa 1900," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 3: 2 (September 2008).
Susan Lanzoni is a Visiting Scholar in the Science, Technology and Studies Program at MIT. She is an historian of science, medicine, and the mind sciences. She is a recipient of a two year scholar’s grant from the National Science Foundation to research the genealogy of Einfühlung/empathy as it traversed disciplines from aesthetics to psychology and the mind sciences. Relevant publication: S. Lanzoni, “Sympathy in Mind, 1873-1900” Journal of the History of Ideas, to appear Fall 2008.
Allan Young is Professor and Chair of the Department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University. Young is an expert in the ethnography of psychiatric science and psychogenic trauma as a clinical entity and as a subject of laboratory and epidemiological research. His work has engaged theories of simulation, imitation and empathy. Relevant publication: A. Young, The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Robin Curtis is an Assistant Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin in the Collaborative Research Centre "Cultures of Performativity" in the Project "Synaesthetic Effects: Kinetics and Colour in Film." Curtis is a leading film and media scholar, filmmaker and curator whose scholarship on the historical concept of empathy and its role in film has galvanized international interest in the topic in cinema studies. Relevant publication: Ed. Robin Curtis and Gertrud Koch. Einfühlung - Zu Geschichte und Gegenwart eines ästhetischen Konzepts. [From Einfühlung to Empathy: The History and Contemporary Career of an Aesthetic Concept] Munich: Fink Verlag, 2008.
Carolyn Dean is Associate Dean of Faculty and the Professor of History and Modern Media and Culture at Brown University. Dean’s current work focuses on the ways in which different concepts of victimization developed in different European countries after WWII. Her work engages the political and cultural ramifications of empathic responses to experiences of victimization. Relevant publication: C. Dean, The Fragility of Empathy after the Holocaust (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).
Jean Decety is Professor of Psychology and co-Director of the Brain Imaging Research Center at the University of Chicago. His research centers on social cognition and two aspects of interpersonal sensitivity: 1) emotional resonance, and 2) the capacity to engage in role taking that has been theoretically linked to the development of empathy, moral reasoning and more generally prosocial behavior. Relevant publication: J. Decety, Philip L. Jackson, “The Functional Architecture of Human Empathy” Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience Review, 2004: 3: 71-100.
Adam Frank is Associate Professor of English at UBC. Frank’s work offers a critical, historical analysis of how affective communication is reorganized by modern graphic technologies in literature. His analysis of Gertrude Stein’s theory of audience emotional experience in theatre explores the connection between the topic of empathy and the arts. Relevant publication: A. Frank, “Phantoms Limn: Silvan Tomkins and Affective Prosthetics” Theory and Psychology. 17.4 (August 2007); 515-528.
Shaun Gallagher is Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences, and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Central Florida. Gallagher’s research interests include phenomenology, philosophy of mind, hermeneutics, and embodiment. In his work he has challenged the “theory of mind” and “simulation’ approaches to the way we understand and empathize with others. Relevant publication: S. Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Sneja Gunew is Professor, English and Women's Studies at UBC and specializes in postcolonial and feminist theory, multicultural critical theory and diasporic and ethnic minority writings. She has taught in England, Australia and Canada and has published widely on postcolonial, multicultural, and feminist critical theory. She was Director of the Centre for Women's and Gender Studies at UBC 2002-7 and is currently Associate Principal of the College for Interdisciplinary Studies, UBC. She is North American editor of Feminist Theory (Sage). Her current work is in comparative multiculturalism and in diasporic literatures and their intersections with national and global cultural formations. Relevant Publication: Haunted Nations: The Colonial Dimensions of Multiculturalisms (Routledge, UK 2004).
Laurence Kirmayer is Professor and Director of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University. Kirmayer is a prominent cultural psychiatrist who studies the relevance of culture to psychiatric consultation and undertakes comparative, multicultural models of mental health care. He works on Aboriginal mental health and the politics of empathy and alterity in clinical practice. Relevant publication: L. Kirmayer, Robert Lemelson, Mark Barad, co-editors, Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical and Cultural Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Ruth Leys is a Professor of Humanities and Director of the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University. Leys is an historian of psychology, psychiatry and the life sciences and has written on psychic trauma from Janet and Freud to contemporary theorists. She is currently researching the post-war history of experimental and theoretical approaches to emotions. Relevant publication: R. Leys, From Guilt to Shame: Auschwitz and After (Princeton 2007).
Elizabeth Lunbeck is Professor and Chair in American History at Vanderbilt University. Lunbeck is an historian of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, with an interest in gender studies. She is currently analyzing narcissism in America as both a clinical category and cultural critique. Her work on empathy examines its use as an epistemological tool n the history of psychiatry. Relevant publication: E. Lunbeck, The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender & Power in Modern America (Princeton, 1996).
Steven Meyer is Associate Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. Meyer’s interests include American literature, literature and science, and the interrelation between literary practices and neuroscientific accounts of consciousness. His recent work addresses the profound continuities between Gertrude Stein's compositional practices and recent accounts of the neurophysiological bases of consciousness. Relevant publication: S. Meyer, Irresistible Dictation: Gertrude Stein and the Correlations of Writing and Science (2001; paperback 2003).
Harry Mallgrave is Associate Professor of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Director of the International Center for Sustainable Cities, IIT. Mallgrave has been a pioneer in bringing the German tradition of empathy aesthetics to English speaking scholars. He is an eminent historian and theorist of modern architecture and a practicing architect. Relevant publication: H. Mallgrave and Ikonomou, co-editors, Empathy, Form and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873-1893 (Oxford: OUP, 1994).
Gordon McOuat is an Associate Professor, Humanities and Social Sciences, Contemporary Studies Programme, History of Science and Technology Programme at the University of King’s College, Halifax. His work covers the history, philosophy and politics of classification systems, logic and natural kinds, and general work in the methodology, history, philosophy, and culture of science. Relevant publication: G. McOuat "From Cutting Nature at its Joints to Measuring it: New Kinds and New Kinds of People in Biology," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2001.
Amir Raz is Canada Research Chair in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention at McGill University. Raz is a clinical neuroscientist with a strong experimental approach. His work on attention, suggestion and effortful control sheds light on empathic and imitative interaction between individuals. Relevant publication: A. Raz, “From Repression and Attention to Culture and Automaticity” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (5), 2006, 530.
Frank Stahnisch is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Community Health Sciences and History at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. His research interests include historical epistemology of the biomedical sciences in the 19th and 20th century, and historical and theoretical relations between the brain sciences and the philosophy of mind. Relevant publication: F. Stahnisch and Florian Steger, eds., Medizin, Geschichte und Geschlecht. Koerperhistorische Rekonstruktionen von Identitaeten und Differenzen (History and Philosophy of Medicine, 1: Franz Steiner Press, 2005).
Karsten Stueber is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. His research interests include the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and psychology, philosophy of social science, and Wittgenstein. In the last few years his writings and research interests have been primarily concerned with providing an account of our ability to understand other agents. Relevant publication: K. Stueber, Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human Sciences (MIT Press 2006).
Evan Thompson is Professor of Philosophy and Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science & Embodied Mind (Tier 2) at the University of Toronto. Thompson’s research focuses on the philosophy of mind, phenomenology and the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness. He links experimental life sciences and phenomenological investigations of subjectivity and experience in elucidating the dynamics of empathy and interaction. Relevant publication: E. Thompson, “Empathy and Consciousness” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (5-7) 2001, 1-32.
Stephen Turner is Graduate Research Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida. Turner has written on the history and philosophy of the social sciences, sociology, the social theory of practices, tacit knowledge, and Max Weber among other topics. He has directly engaged recent neuroscientific research on empathy and mirror neurons in a philosophical assessment of its implications for social theory. Relevant Publication: S. Turner, “Mirror Neurons and Practices: A Reply to Lizardo” Journal for Theory for Social Behavior. 37: 351-371.
Marga Vicedo is an historian of biology at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto. Her interests include the history and philosophy of biology in the twentieth century, especially the history of genetics, evolution, and animal research. She has researched the history of the maternal instinct from Darwin to the present, and her recent work comprises a history and critical analysis of the ethological theory of attachment behavior. Relevant publication: M. Vicedo, “The Laws of Heredity and the Rules of Morality: Early Geneticists on Evolution and Ethics." In Jane Maienschein & Michael Ruse, eds., Biology and the Foundations of Ethics. (Cambridge University Press, 1999) pp. 225-256.
Dan Zahavi is Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication at the University of Copenhagen and Director, Center of Subjectivity Research, Danish National Research Foundation. Zahavi has published extensively on the German phenomenological tradition with attention to Husserlian theories of intersubjectivity and the relation of the self to another, and has collaborated with cognitive psychologists and psychiatrists at the Center for Subjectivity Research. Relevant Publication: D. Zahavi, "Simulation, projection and empathy." Consciousness and Cognition 17, 2008, 514-522.