Are We Taking Care of Each Other?

She integrates scientific and literary thinking, and is especially interested in multisensory imagery and emotions.

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Here she is interviewed by KASHISH KALWANI, a former student of Professor Otis, about the ethics of care.

Q: Welcome, Professor Otis. Could you please share a little bit about your background and your interest in ethics and care?

At university, I studied biochemistry and neuroscience. Then I had a huge crisis, and ended up with a Ph.D. in comparative literature. So my research and teaching involve the intersection of literature and science. I became interested in caregiving because my mother developed early onset dementia in her early 60s, and that led to an interest in seeing how caregiving is represented in stories, novels, and plays, how people create narratives around caregiving, how realistic they are, and the ethics involved in representing caregiving. That's what brought me to the course at Emory.

Q: How do you find that literature and neuroscience have formed your understanding and approach to care and ethics, in academics and everyday life?

Literature and science evoke compassion in different ways. Science reminds us of what we all have in common. A lot of people in literary studies think that everything is influenced or even determined by culture and language, but when you think about how brains work, you realize that anyone's brain can develop problems.

As we age, we develop similar problems. Seeing the things that can go wrong with the human nervous system evokes tenderness in me. I realize how precious and beautiful it is, and want to take care of it, not abuse it. When I see someone who has trouble moving or thinking, I think that everything wrong with that person's nervous system could go wrong with mine, or with anybody I know. Science is a reminder of what we have in common.

Literature opens my mind to different ways of looking at caregiving and understanding or experiencing disease that might not otherwise have occurred to me.