The tentative topic for my senior paper is how the development of the novel as a form in the 1700s helped influence the development of empathy and human rights. Eh? Eh? Pretty rad, amirite?
This is my list of sources to check out. They’re in order of how relevant they are, (that is to say: how badly I want them). I’ve already read a few of them, the Hunt and the Pinker are how I got the idea to do this in the first place, but I need to reread them with note-taking and topic-narrowing in mind. I’m still at the stage where it seems like I’ll never find enough to write, but as I research that’ll pass, and if I can find a little niche in which to do new writing, that’ll be great. My biggest issue right now is keeping it historical and not drifting into psychology, although I’ll incorporate at least a page or two of psychological babble just to discuss whether or not empathy is actually affected by novels, etc. There’s been some research in that vein recently and I’d like to include it. (It seems to support the novels-created-empathy thesis, but if it debunks the thesis, that’ll be great content as well!) The “articles” and “primary sources” sections will undergo some expansion as I do my research.
Anyway, I hope this list will be useful for anyone interested in the topic, and it’s also a foundational part of my process. I’ll probably be blogging all the way through this paper, so best to start at the beginning! Also, if you happen to know of any more sources that might be relevant, please do alert me.
Without further ado, here’s the list:
| Books (Important) |
| Inventing Human Rights by Lynn Hunt |
| The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker |
| The Moral Laboratory by J.F. Hakemulder |
| Empathy and the Novel by S. Keen |
| The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel by L. Price |
| The Rise of Mass Literacy by Vincent |
| Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law by Slaughter |
| Books (Less Important) |
| Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundation by Green, Strange, & Brock |
| Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives by Goldie & Coplan |
| The Expanding Circle by Peter Singer |
| The Civilizing Process by Norbert Elias |
| Epistolary Bodies by Cook |
| A Farewell to Alms by G. Clark (178-80, 251-2) |
| The Age of Empathy by F.B.M. de Waal |
| Small World by D. Lodge |
| Cultivating Humanity by M. Nussbaum |
| A History of Force by J.L. Payne |
| The Empathic Civilization by J. Rifkin |
| The Spectacle of Suffering by Spierenburg |
| Primary Sources |
| Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded by Richardson |
| Julie, or the New Heloise by Rousseau |
| Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady by Richardson |
| Articles |
| C.D. Batson et al — especially “Empathy, attitudes and action” and “Is empathic emotion a source of altruistic motivation?” |
| “The function of fiction is the abstraction and simulation of social experience” by R.A. Mar, in Perspectives on Psychological Science |
| “Bookworms versus nerds” by R.A. Mar in Journal of Research in Personality |
| “The perception-action model of empathy and psychopathic “cold-heartedness”” by Mealey & Kinner, in Behavioral & Brain Sciences |
| “Quantitative analysis of culture using millions of digitized books” by Michel et al, in Science |
