This edited volume explores the historical, practical and pedagogical possibilities for expressing and cultivating empathy through works of art. While aspects of what we today recognize as empathy has nestled in the artistic experiences and philosophies of all ages, the subjective and elusive nature of empathic responses has often resulted in the relegation of empathy to the margins of art historical inquiry. Moving into the second quarter of the twenty-first century, amidst global health crises, civic unrest, political turmoil, and persistent social inequities and injustices, this capacity to feel with and as someone or something outside of ourselves is more critical than ever. Probing the very notion of empathy, contributions address themes ranging from environmental and social justice to identity and inclusion to transdisciplinary pedagogies and practices, each with a critical eye to how works of art not only appeal to empathic sensibilities, but might play an active role in developing capacities for empathy in viewers.
Chapter
1. Introduction.
Chapter
2. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing on
Laocoön: Empathy, Motor Imagery, and Predictive Processing.
Chapter
3.
Translations of Pain: Ferdinand Hodlers Cancer Paintings of Valentine
Godé-Darel.
Chapter
4. Paint and Pain: Gustav Adolf Mossas Psychological
Self-Portrait, Misogynist Self-Empathy, and Bloody Decadent Creativity.-
Chapter
5. Objective Non-Empathy in Late Nineteenth-Century France.
Chapter
6. Abstracting Empathy: Wassily Kandinsky and His Artistic Interpretations of
Theories in Visual Perception.
Chapter
7. Engaging Feeling: The Subject of
Landscape in the Twenty-First Century.
Chapter
8. Thinking Empathy in
Biennials and Art History Again.
Chapter
9. The Empathic Space of Art: Video
Games and Virtual Reality as Tools in Socially Engaged Art Practice.
Chapter
10. Empathy in Roman Commemorative Art.
Chapter 11. Shethe great agitator:
Käthe Kollwitz and the Limits of Empathetic Spectatorship in Weimar Germany.-
Chapter
12. Empathic Engagements with Death and Loss in the Work of Diane
Victor.
Chapter
13. Empathy Rather than Ageism: A Daughters Portrayal of
Her Elderly Holocaust Survivor Mother.
Chapter
14. The Empathic Resonances
of Village of Women (2019): On Cinematic Expansion Through Retreat.
Chapter
15. Feeling Into and Feeling With: Art Practice and Empathic Attention.-
Chapter
16. Art as Empathetic Connection: Ways to Heal the Brain and Soul
from Trauma.
Chapter
17. Visual Art and Empathy: A Fusion of the
Intellectual and Emotional.
Chapter
18. Exploring Empathic Engagements:
Resources for Educators and Students.
Susan Barahal is a Senior Lecturer at Tufts University, USA where she teaches courses on art education. Her research interests include how art facilitates and informs learning and understanding across the disciplines and content areas. Susans recent research explores the empathic responses that art objects evoke in viewers. She is a practicing artist and a juried member of the New England Sculptors Association.
Elizabeth Pugliano is Senior Instructor of art history at the University of Colorado Denver. Her work balances art historical research on violence, combat, gender, audience, reception and cognition in medieval art with pedagogical inquiries into issues encountered in the art history classroom and innovation in teaching practice.
