In this essay I analyze a series of first-person homeless accounts and reader responses in the Las Vegas Sun newspaper in order to highlight the social conditions that support or inhibit empathy. I review the rhetorical study of empathy and incorporate work from social psychology and moral philosophy to identify and examine the conditions of assessing victimhood and recognizing of self-other overlap. I find the irony of empathy to be that the very social forces that would necessitate an expansion of empathy also inhibit it through increasing social division and the reluctance of readers to recognize their own vulnerabilities in the positions of others. I contend throughout that a focus on empathy as an individual experience overlooks the social production of empathy, which is more appropriately considered through a rhetorical perspective.

Empathy is attracting increased attention within and beyond the academy. In this essay I review relevant theories of empathy and their place within rhetoric and composition. I propose two approaches to teaching empathy: as rhetoric and as disposition. A rhetorical approach incorporates a necessary critical awareness of empathy’s enticements and limitations, while a dispositional approach cultivates empathy as a habit of mind. I argue that writing pedagogies of empathy as rhetoric and disposition are ideally suited to combine the cognitive and affective, critical awareness and practice, to inform not only our engagements with texts but also with one another.

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Review Article| October 01 2014 A Cognitive Route to Social Justice: Mark Bracher’s Radical Pedagogies Literature and Social Justice: Protest Novels, Cognitive Politics, and Schema Criticism. By Bracher, Mark. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. Eric Leake Eric Leake Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2014) 14 (3): 553–559. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2715850 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Eric Leake; A Cognitive Route to Social Justice: Mark Bracher’s Radical Pedagogies. Pedagogy 1 October 2014; 14 (3): 553–559. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2715850 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2014 by Eric Leake2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

In this article I examine The Lancet Iraq casualty reports for their demonstration of prefigured accommodation, a rhetorical strategy in which the authors anticipate and attempt to influence their work's wider popularization. My reading of the reports and accompanying commentaries attends to the introduction of journalistic features and calls to political action. As part of my analysis, I interview a lead author of the reports about his rhetorical concerns in composing the work of a politically engaged science.

Technological and economic change within the business and social function of journalism are moving civic literacy practices ever closer to those of citizen journalism. In this article, I survey the changes underway as journalism becomes less a profession and more a practice, a way of reading and writing about society. I draw from journalism studies and civic literacy pedagogies to argue that the writing classroom has a valuable role to play in shaping civic literacy practices in concert with those of citizen journalism. Many of the practices of citizen journalism—including research, analysis, community engagement, the consideration of evidence and perspectives, a move toward new means of publication and social action—are exactly those capturing the attention of composition scholars.