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The Origins of Empathy, and its Use for Conflict Resolutionwith Marcus Bullock
Tuesday, October 15th,
2:00-4:00pm
The Metropolitan Building, 5th Floor Room: 5183
3434 N. Washington Blvd
Description: It’s natural to assume that the word “empathy” has been in our vocabulary since ancient times, that the concept is as old as civilization, and that the word has always meant the same thing. This turns out not to be true...
The difficulty comes with the way we name things. For this reason “empathy” provides us with a really useful example of how we fall into errors by naming an activity of the mind as though it were just a thing. We do this because we are so attracted to the idea of establishing a fixed identity for anything we deal with. Yet that attractive clarity may actually impede our work. A word as apparently useful and as hopeful as empathy may conceal its own elements of blindness. And that creates an aspect of our work that we cannot afford to leave undone.
Bio: Marcus Bullock grew up and was educated first in England and then as a graduate at Ohio University and the University of Oregon, where he earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in 1980. He taught in the departments of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, St. Louis, was successively a professor of German, Comparative Literature, and English, now emeritus, at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and is currently a Research Associate in the Department of Comparative Literature and Folklore Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. At the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee he coordinated the interdisciplinary graduate program in Modern Studies. He has published books on 20th century German Literature, with a special emphasis on the philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin. He was a co-editor of the Harvard University Press edition of Benjamin's Selected Writings, and also collection of essays on the experience of refugees, Aftermaths: Exile, Migration, and Diaspora Reconsidered.