When Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue, decided to do a feature on comic Amy Schumer for the July issue of the magazine, she came up with a novel idea: Each woman would change places for 24 hours.

For English-born, urbane and sophisticated Ms. Wintour, that meant she had to “get up late, eat a bagel, walk around the park ... work a comedy club, go home and have sex with her boyfriend.” (Wintour claims that the only thing she did not do was have “sex with a boyfriend.”)

Ms. Schumer, on the other hand, got up early and went to Ms. Wintour's office at Vogue, where she directed the fashion and accessories editors to change all clothes for an upcoming photo shoot — aiming for comfort as opposed to style.

Needless to say, a strange tableau emerged.

British writer/professor David Lodge has written several amusing and best-selling novels on the academic exchange between British English professor “Philip Swallow” (a thinly disguised version of Mr. Lodge) and an American English professor “Morris Zapp” (who many — including the character Morris Zapp — say was based on former Hopkins professor Stanley Fish). The differences between their heritage, their ideas and their lifestyles are often hysterically funny.

The first novel in the series is called “Changing Places.”

One of the many reasons we read novels is to expose ourselves to others' lives. Unfortunately, many still think that most people are like them and their friends. For others, the grass is always greener; however, getting closer to different people often proves the opposite.

Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel recently died at 87. His acclaimed memoir “Night,” which is often hard to read for the atrocities described, but necessary to understand man's inhumanity to man, has become part of the curriculum in many high schools and colleges.

Knowing people whose lives are different from ours, develops empathy, a trait sorely lacking in many people today. For example, how much more footage do we need to see on TV of uprooted men, women and children — people starving for food and water — fleeing from violent countries, yet with no other place to go, before we feel something for them?

Why would we, as a democratic country started by immigrants and strengthened by immigrants, want to prohibit new immigrants from entering? A

s for the terrorism argument — think Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (Oklahoma bombers), Eric Rudolph (1996 Olympic games in Atlanta), unibomber Ted Kaczynski, Adam Lanza (Connecticut schoolchildren shooter) not to mention those who killed innocent abortion physicians — and the list goes on.

All were Americans; all were murderers.

Often, however, it is not so much ethnicity, religion or race that divides us but socio-economic class. Some 60 to 70 years ago, the middle-and upper-middle classes left the so-called crowded, crime-ridden cities for the suburbs. Then, approximately 30 to 40 years later, their children grown, those who could afford to, moved back to the cities to enjoy the proximity of culture and entertainment. The younger, more affluent men and women — that is, the young professionals began moving into so-called poorer city areas, “gentrifying” those areas, while forcing many long-time poorer resident to move — often to projects, to Section 8 housing, isolating them even more.

Actress, playwright, NYU professor and National Humanities Medal awardee Anna Deavere Smith, originally from Baltimore, has come up with one way to solve the “us versus them” dilemma. In her one-woman show, “Notes From The Field,” she plays multiple parts in order to examine the chasm between the rich and the poor.

At the end of some performances, Ms. Smith invites members of the audience to fill out pledge cards offering to walk a child to school, to volunteer for a social service organization or to donate money to related research projects.

Whereas not everyone is able to physically change places with someone who is different from him or her, we should try to be able to imaginatively change places, to put ourselves in someone else's shoes, so to speak, which can serve to make us better people, a better nation.

Lynne Agress, who teaches in the Odyssey Program of Johns Hopkins, is president of BWB-Business Writing At Its Best Inc. and author of “The Feminine Irony” and “Working With Words in Business and Legal Writing.” Her email is lynneagress@aol.com.