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Does Reading Historical Drama Increase Historical Knowledge And Empathy? The Case Of Dorothy Sayers’S The Man Born To Be King, Albert Cheng
Does Reading Historical Drama Increase Historical Knowledge And Empathy? The Case Of Dorothy Sayers’S The Man Born To Be King, Albert Cheng
Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications
Literary theorists have argued that literary reading fosters empathy, a claim that has substantial empirical support. In this study, I consider the more specific case of reading historical drama and its potential to foster historical empathy among secondary school students. Although several educational interventions for fostering historical empathy have been proposed, none have yet considered the potential of reading historical drama. I evaluate an intervention where students engaged with selected plays from Dorothy Sayers’s The Man Born to be King that depict the Nativity and Easter narratives. After the intervention, I find that these students, compared to students who did …