Empathy as Being Human in American Drama
Papers will consider how American theatre and drama of any period addresses empathy as part of the human experience. What notions of empathy are sedimented into traditional form(s) and/or by what practices do American plays re-humanize compassion for “the other?” Do American plays invite us to recognize “the other” in ourselves? How might empathy, compassion, and humanism help us to ask new questions regarding American theatre’s past, present, and future - such as how American plays refashion Classical ideas about dramatic catharsis? Conversely, panelists might pursue lines of inquiry, Brechtian or otherwise, which ask readers and audiences to consider a politicized theatrical “awakening” as an empathetic act.