Humanities for Humans conversation in NYC, featuring Jennifer Evans (Professor of History at Carleton University), Suzanne Keen (author of Empathy and the Novel), and moderated by Irene Kacandes

What can history teach us about how specific actors cultivate emotions in citizens?

Commentators from across the political spectrum as well as ordinary citizens have remarked what could appear as contradictory trends:  on the one hand, feelings seem to be at an historic intensity—everyone is very angry or very enthusiastic or very disappointed or very supportive or very worried or very optimistic–and on the other, it seems as if many folks can no longer feel anything at all. Both trends seem to suppress compassion for fellow citizens who do not hold one’s own political views or belong to one’s social or ethnic group.

This Humanities for Humans conversation, featuring Jennifer Evans (Professor of History at Carleton University), Suzanne Keen (author of Empathy and the Novel), and moderated by Irene Kacandes, asked: How can traditional alliances navigate negative political rhetoric on both sides of the Atlantic? Terms like “affect” “conviviality”, “cruelty”, “empathy”, “kindness”, “solidarity”, and “suffering” were defined and discussed, shedding light on how feelings get generated by and mobilized through political speech.

Furthermore, the conversation explored if empathy can be taught; What can history teach us about how specific actors cultivate emotions in citizens? What can literature and the arts teach us? What strategies can enhance progress toward solutions that improve life for most people?

The event was sponsored by 1014: space for ideas (NYC), an independent U.S. not-for-profit organization founded in 2017 upon the initiative of the German Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe-Institut, and the DeGruyter Foundation (Berlin), a not-for-profit organization that promotes research and scholarship with a focus on the humanities.