Empathising with literary characters – and thus learning about one’s own emotional world

Anes Osmić, literary scholar and author, has a pragmatic approach to using literature: reading should teach us specific, practical lessons. In his doctoral thesis, which the Senior Scientist at the University of Sarajevo is writing at the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Klagenfurt, he addresses the issue of emotional literacy, and how it can be developed with the help of literature. He is currently the recipient of the Lejla Hairlahović-Hušić Scholarship from the War Childhood Museum and the Lejla Hairlahović-Hušić Foundation.

Anes Osmić has a mission, as he tells us in an online interview from Sarajevo: “I want to contribute to improving the education system by drawing attention to a specific and practical use of literature that can benefit children. In my opinion, fostering emotional literacy is a worthwhile endeavour because by doing so, we can acquire important skills for our everyday lives.”

The concept of emotional literacy refers to skills that allow a person to understand and express emotions, to regulate their own emotions and to deal with the emotions of others. Marc Brackett, founder of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, has identified five skills that are central to Anes Osmić’s work: Perceiving emotions, understanding emotions, labelling emotions, expressing emotions and regulating emotions.

In the past two years of his doctoral studies, Anes Osmić has worked with children in grades five, seven and nine on literary examples and their effects on emotional literacy. The children kept a ‘diary of feelings’ for this purpose, which helped them to overcome inhibitions when expressing emotions, because, as Anes Osmić says: “Emotions are not only a psychological phenomenon, but also embedded in cultural contexts. We are often not used to expressing our feelings. Sometimes we even feel compelled to suppress them.” The results, as he describes them, are quite remarkable: “We observed that the children were better able to perceive and understand feelings. Interestingly, it was also easier for them to regulate their feelings. We did not detect any change in the other two areas.”

He has now summarised his findings in a doctoral thesis that runs to over 400 pages. Next, these results need to be condensed. He is supported in his work by Cristina Beretta, who is his supervisor at the University of Klagenfurt (Department of Slavic Studies). Thanks to his academic thesis, Anes Osmić was able to proceed directly from his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes at the University of Sarajevo, where he studied at the Department of the Literatures of the Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Before he started working there as a Senior Teaching Assistant, he taught at primary and secondary schools in Bosnia. Even then, he realised that he wanted to use the functional role of literature, because, as Anes Osmić says: “We believe that literature should be a source of inspiration that we can draw on to benefit our everyday lives.”