“…epidemics are never only about pathogens. They are also filtered through the words of newspapers, proclamations, and popular accounts — words that, like folk tales, provided frameworks for speaking about disaster.” Official COVID-19 awareness poster (2020) by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, reimagining Shevchenko wearing a protective mask. The inscription «Борітеся — поборете» (“StruggleContinueContinue reading “Epidemics in Word and Imagination: Ukrainian Literature Between Folklore, the Press, and Science”
Author Archives: medepchanse
When is a Pandemic also a Metaphor?
“Given how central metaphor is to how we conceptualise the world, it was inevitable that metaphor would play a pivotal role in our understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Scientifically accurate atomic model of the external structure of SARS-CoV-2. Alexey Solodovnikov (Idea, Producer, CG, Editor), Valeria Arkhipova (Scientific Сonsultant). Source: Wikimedia This blog post begins with aContinueContinue reading “When is a Pandemic also a Metaphor?”
Fin-de-Siècle Youth Magazines and their Construction of Gendered Responses to Sickness
“…messages to young people about supposed ‘correct’ health responses offer insight into how people were expected to react to mass health events in fin-de-siècle Britain.” An example of a front page of The Girl’s Own Paper. A young woman is illustrated as reading to a young man lying ill in bed, emphasising women’s role asContinueContinue reading “Fin-de-Siècle Youth Magazines and their Construction of Gendered Responses to Sickness”
George Gissing, the Fin de Siècle, and Social Change: Understandings of the ‘Russian Influenza’
“Through realism, Gissing exhibits both sides of a cultural shift, with depictions of a man weathered down by metropolis living in New Grub Street (1891), and a yearning for a simpler time with The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1902).” Nineteenth-century Grub Street, as depicted in Robert Chambers Book of Days (1864), Wikimedia. This isContinueContinue reading “George Gissing, the Fin de Siècle, and Social Change: Understandings of the ‘Russian Influenza’”
Infection Within the Ranks: Examining the Way Conspiracies Complicate Public Responses to Pandemics, as Seen in the ‘Russian Flu’ Pandemic (1889-1895)
“As the epidemic developed, theories can be found which suggest that influenza was not an individual infection, but in fact simply an ‘influence’, an ‘electrical state of atmosphere’ with the ability to ‘exercise influence’ on the nervous system.” ‘A Cure for Influenza’ (1891). Cartoon satirising erroneous cures suggested during the 1889 influenza pandemic. Wellcome Collection/Wikimedia.ContinueContinue reading “Infection Within the Ranks: Examining the Way Conspiracies Complicate Public Responses to Pandemics, as Seen in the ‘Russian Flu’ Pandemic (1889-1895)”
Meet the Team: Ching Chi Chan
“This was the time where Pfeiffer’s bacillus was heavily discussed in relation to influenza, yet in both fiction and primary sources, you find people not wanting anything to do with it.” What are the main epidemics that your team focuses on? I am a third year within the Bachelor of Advanced Humanities, studying English Literature.ContinueContinue reading “Meet the Team: Ching Chi Chan”
Meet the Team: Lily Burke
“Alden’s text is providing an example of the influenza pandemic’s indiscriminate nature of infection between classes, aligning with conclusions found in medical journals of the time.” What are the main epidemics that your team focuses on? I am a fourth and final year undergraduate student in a Bachelor of Advanced Humanities with the University ofContinueContinue reading “Meet the Team: Lily Burke”
Meet the Team: Susan Sudbury
“Sickness in [Edith] Nesbit’s novel […] is a conduit to illustrate how the community ought to respond altruistically to suffering, revealing that health is as much a public concern as a private one.” What are the main epidemics that your team focuses on? I am a fifth-year honours student completing a Bachelor of Advanced HumanitiesContinueContinue reading “Meet the Team: Susan Sudbury”
Performing Epidemics: Contagion Cabaret
“Our Mistress of Ceremonies, with her gas mask and red balloon, strode across empty land and streetscapes around Oxford, whilst speaking with great intimacy to us, her captured, quarantined audience, scattered as we were, across the world.” The post-COVID-19 iteration of the Contagion Cabaret When COVID 19 struck in 2020, I had the unworthy thoughtContinueContinue reading “Performing Epidemics: Contagion Cabaret”
Media Technology and Parasite Control: Japan-China Cooperation Under the Name of Family Planning in the 1980s
“…parasite control was less obviously connected to family planning yet it was integral to Japan’s international cooperation efforts in the field.” Topographical map of East Asia. Wikimedia Commons. In the early 1980s, China and Japan began cooperating in family planning through both governmental and nongovernmental channels. This was during China’s so-called ‘one-child policy’, so theContinueContinue reading “Media Technology and Parasite Control: Japan-China Cooperation Under the Name of Family Planning in the 1980s”
Media and Epidemics (MEDEP) 