The Center for Advanced Studies at LMU provides a forum for scientific exchange and discussion that bridges the divide between the established disciplines. Its activities are designed to promote all forms of collaborative research and to stimulate interdisciplinary communication within the University. In addition, it facilitates the integration of visiting scholars and scientists into the academic life of the University.
From their respective disciplinary perspectives, Ute Frevert and Thomas Kohut approach the concept of empathy, which has experienced a remarkable surge of popularization in recent years, in both public discourse and research. While Frevert analyzes empathy from the perspective of historical emotion research, Kohut, a historian with psychoanalytic training, is primarily concerned with the ambivalence of empathy. This ambivalence consists of an imaginative assumption of perspective on the one hand, and a supposed fusion, identification, and sympathy on the other. Both scholars are interested in the changing meaning of the concept from a historical point of view.
Ute Frevert is Director of the research area "The History of Emotions" at the MPI for Human Development in Berlin, and is currently a Visiting Fellow at CAS. Thomas Kohut is Professor of History at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and a Visiting Fellow at CAS.
The event will be conducted in English. For further information, see the CAS website.