Cultures of empathy: introduction

This special issue of the European Journal of English Studies explores a concept with high visibility and increasing popular currency: empathy. Its seven articles analyse the forms and effects of empathic interactions in language, literature, and culture throughout a variety of cultural products– films, poetry, science fiction, dystopia, children’s books. The title “Cultures of Empathy” is meant to emphasize to what extent social and (trans)cultural encounters are defined nowadays along the lines of empathy or of its lack. The articles carefully unpack “empathy”, the concept itself and pursue its many physical, ideological, and emotional entanglements. As these articles demonstrate, empathy remains at the centre of current debates about the fluid, affective overlaps involved in matters of inclusion, diversity, and social justice, and so it deserves further interdisciplinary research.