This is a past event.

Concerns about empathy are at the center of many of the present moment’s most pressing challenges. For example, empathy (or its absence) is regularly heralded as a major factor shaping social disparities, political divisions, societal alienation, and popular distrust—with implications for education, industry, healthcare, social media, and AI, among other domains. What would it mean for us to adopt a more meaningful and nuanced approach to empathy in the present? What kind of empathy is worth working toward in the future? Engaging with questions like these, this workshop offers participants a space to reconsider and reconceptualize the role of empathy in personal, public, and professional life. Leading this workshop are two influential scholars of empathy: Lisa Blankenship (Baruch College, author of Changing the Subject: A Theory of Rhetorical Empathy) and Eric Leake (Texas State, author of Difficult Empathy and Rhetorical Encounters). Blankenship and Leake have worked separately and together to conceptualize the rhetorical and pedagogical possibilities of empathy—paying particular attention to empathy’s relationship to writing, and to communication and collaboration across difference. To provide a foundation for the workshop, these scholars will offer an introduction to their scholarship on empathy, outlining some of the major conceptual and practical issues involved. They will then facilitate as participants engage in critical conversations about empathy’s hidden complexities and challenges. To foster productive dialogue within the MTU community and beyond, this workshop is free and open to the public. Join these scholars for a discussion of the possibilities and perils of empathy.