One day symposium asking what literary approaches and contemporary clinical practice have to say to one another.

The Difficulty of Empathy: Rethinking the Literary Arts and Healthcare

University of Leicester and University of Glasgow (online event -- Teams links provided after registration)

Claims about literature’s capacity to cultivate empathy have become commonplace across literary studies, narrative medicine, healthcare education, and the medical humanities. Yet the concept itself remains surprisingly difficult: variously understood as a cognitive skill, an affective response, a moral disposition, a professional competency, or a culturally specific mode of relating to others. At the same time, the relationship between reading and empathy continues to generate debate. What, precisely, happens when a reader encounters a literary text? How does this compare to what occurs when a clinician encounters a patient? What forms of attention, interpretation, and understanding are at stake in each case?

This online symposium brings together researchers, practitioners and early-career scholars working at the intersection of literary studies, medical humanities, healthcare, and related disciplines to think about what literary approaches and contemporary clinical practice have to say to one another. We take as our starting point the conviction that empathy is a genuinely difficult concept, one which seems well-worn and yet remains contested and culturally specific. Rather than assuming empathy as a straightforward good or measurable outcome, we invite participants to explore its ambiguities, limits, and possibilities.

About the project

This symposium is part of the AHRC-funded project ‘Empathy, Difficulty, Difference: Creative Curiosity in Practice’ led by Dr. Felicity James (University of Leicester). This project critically responds to urgent concerns about the erosion of empathy within health systems – and makes the case for the literary arts as a means to help healthcare practitioners and teams.

Teams link provided on registration

10:00–10:15

Welcome & introduction

Dr. Madeleine Chalmers (University of Glasgow) and Dr. Felicity James (University of Leicester

10:15–11:15

Panel 1A: Race and Care

Sophie Fennelly (University of Leeds), ‘Difficult Empathy: Reading literature, film and TV to bridge the clinical-experience gap in Black British mental health’

Dr. Manali Karmakar (Vellore Institute of Technology), ‘Reflecting on Empathy and its Limits in the Clinical Practice through Guruprasad Kaginele’s Hijab’

Caroline Schep (Universiteit Leiden), ‘(No) space for compassion? Medicine on Sumatran plantations in Madelon Székely-Lulofs’ Doekoen’

Panel 1B: Religion and Belief

Dr. Vedran Obućina (Centre for Interreligious Dialogue, Croatia) and Dr. Ahmed M. M. Saleh (Sinai University), ‘Hospitality, Religious Ethics, and the Literary Imagination of Care’

Dr. Meera Kumar (Jain University), ‘The Ambiguity of Empathy: Moving Beyond Narrative Limitations’

Dalva Lamminmäki (University of Eastern Finland), ‘Revisiting Folk Healers: Empathy, Belief, and Traditional Healing’

11:15–11:30

Coffee break

11:30–12:30

Panel 2A: Memoirs and Graphic Medicine

Nitin Kumar (Birla Institute of Technology), ‘Beyond Empathy: Understanding the Limits of Compassion in Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371’

Prerna Tolani (National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli), ‘From Empathy to Equity: Neurodiversity Comics and the Redistribution of Epistemic Agency’

Dr. Jade Elizabeth French (Loughborough University), ‘Sans Empathy?’

Panel 2B: Mental Illness

Hakima Choukri (University of Abdelmalek Essaadi), “History through the Lens of the Mentally Ill:” Empathy and Epistemic Quests in Mona Simpson’s Commitment

Preeti Pallavi Mohanta (The English and Foreign Languages University), ‘The Subjectivity of Alterity: Embodied Experientiality and the Ethics of Witnessing in Selected Mental Illness Memoirs’

Dr. Irina Rabinovich (Holon Institute of Technology), ‘The Difficulty of Empathy: Women’s Asylum Writing Beyond Compassion’

12:30–13.30

Lunch break

13:30–14:30

Panel 3A: Embodiment

Dr. Tamara Alexander (Author, mediator and community healthcare worker), ‘Beyond Empathy: Sensual Attunement and the Literary Body’

Dr. Nadine Sigalov (Independent scholar), ‘Embodied Relationality, Hyper-Empathy, and Neurodivergence in Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake’

Prof. Fella Benabed (Badji Mokhtar-Annaba University), ‘The Burden of Hyperempathy and the Limits of Care in Octavia Butler’s Parables’

Panel 3B: Medical Practice and Pedagogy

Dr. Katharine Low (King’s College London), ‘Making space for compathy and vulnerability: Performance Pedagogies in Medical Education’

Dr. Ali Round (University of Bristol), ‘Narrative medicine: chimera or actuality?’

Amy Hall (University of Sheffield), ‘The insufficiency of empathy: the role of value judgements in medicine’

14:30—15:00

Coffee break

15:00—15.30

Closing reflections

Chaired by Dr. Madeleine Chalmer

Description supplied by the event organiser.