Narrative contributes to mutual understanding between cultures in a global world, as Arthur W. Frank, who received his PhD in Sociology from Yale University and is currently a professor of sociology at the University of Calgary (Canada), argued at the University of Navarra.

The expert was one of the main speakers at the symposium "Life Writing as Empathy: A Symposium on Narrative Emotions," organized by the Emotional Culture and Identity project of the Institute for Culture and Society, which Zurich Insurance finances.

"Understanding happens through knowing others' stories, which circulate within communities. These stories allow us to understand who others are and why they act as they do in accordance with their conception of reality," Frank claimed.

Along this same line, Professor Frank argued that narrative helps unravel complex challenges in today's societies. As an example, he mentioned how narrative has changed stories about immigration in America since the nineteenth century: "In the past, migrants had a cultural expectation to become Canadians or Americans. Nowadays, they want to preserve their culture, including language, clothing, and food... There is strong narrative element that helps makes sense of immigration and the limits of integration in host societies."

Narratives and disease: medical imperialism

Furthermore, Professor Frank referred to another of his research lines, the narrative of disease. On this question, he regretted that "medicine exercises narrative imperialism and the history of disease becomes in fact a medical narrative." Thus, he believes that "no one takes into account the everyday struggle waged by the sick" and that, instead, "the story is reduced to the treatment process."

Arthur W. Frank is professor emeritus at the University of Calgary (Canada) and a professor at Betanien University College (Norway). He also serves at the Center for Narrative Practice in Boston and has been a visiting professor at universities in Japan, Britain and Canada. He is an elected member of the Royal Society of Canada and, in 2008, was awarded a prize in Bioethics. He specializes in the experience of disease, narrative ethics, and studies of the body.

Professor Frank gave these remarks at an ICS-sponsored symposium, which aimed to analyze empathy in biographical works, within the framework of emotions and emotional cultures, and was meant as an interdisciplinary dialogue using a variety of texts, such as memoirs, diaries, letters, films, documentaries, and online media. In total, thirty experts, from ten countries, participated.

Among other topics, the meeting addressed teaching empathy through literature, empathy and social identity (ethnicity, disability, gender, age and social class), representations of emotions related to empathy, acceptance and the reader's empathy, memory and empathy, and the ethics of empathy.

Other prominent speakers included Suzanne Keen, who earned her PhD from Harvard University and is Dean and Professor of English at Washington and Lee University (USA)  and Irene Kacandes, who earned her PhD from Harvard University and is a Professor of comparative literature at Dartmouth College (USA).