Want to Develop Empathy & Learn to Focus? Try Reading James Joyce

How can literary classics – along with 21st-century technologies – improve empathy and critical skills?
Edward Maloney, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship (CNDLS), started as a computer science major as an undergraduate but was drawn to the emphasis on critical thinking that dominates the humanities. As a professor who teaches courses on modernism and postmodernism at Georgetown, Maloney believes the humanities are especially valuable as an antidote to the constant distraction and emphasis on multitasking of the digital age. Maloney argues that working through difficult literary texts can not only strengthen resilience and concentration skills, but can also help people challenge assumptions—important for tackling major global challenges like climate change. According to recent research, reading difficult literary fiction may even help increase empathy. “The idea of getting inside someone else’s head and seeing emotional connections and interactions between individuals, even as they’re fictionalized,” Maloney said, “allows you to imagine what it means for you to have those kinds of interactions with someone in the world. In some ways, it’s a way of practicing your sense of empathy…it’s alway a way of seeing emotional experiences you may not have had.”

CNDLS explores the ways digital technology can facilitate learning at higher levels of complexity and for ever-greater numbers of students. Georgetown was one of the first universities to dive into the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) space. “We saw MOOCs as connecting to the Jesuit mission of teaching students outside our walls, to reach out to the community,” Maloney said. MOOCs haven’t fully lived up their imagined potential, and the humanities in particular can be difficult to translate to the online sphere, given the difficulty of algorithmic essay grading as compared to mathematical assessment. Yet despite these obstacles, Maloney is enthusiastic about the benefits afforded by new technology: greater accessibility of classic texts, tools that enable more advanced research, and a rapidly expanding volume of content created in the digital space.