“…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”
Category Archives: COVID-19
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”
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”
COVID-19 Experiences Alchemized Through Arts: A Case Study on Script Writing and Filmmaking with High School Students
“…the narratives evolved from personal anecdotes into complex stories enriched with interpersonal tension.” Making a timeline of the pandemic involved remembering the COVID-19 timeline and adding three personal events and two events that happened in the media. The main idea of this exercise was to remember personal events that can become a story but alsoContinueContinue reading “COVID-19 Experiences Alchemized Through Arts: A Case Study on Script Writing and Filmmaking with High School Students”
The Public Reception to TV Drama as a COVID-19 Information Source
“Film and TV can offer nuanced perspectives on complex issues and emotions that are often hard to grasp through traditional information channels”. Intensive care hospital fighting Covid-19 in Pesaro, Italy. Photo by Alberto Giuliani, Wikimedia Commons. March 19, 2020. As the most recent pandemic in history, COVID-19 had the unique position of being documented byContinueContinue reading “The Public Reception to TV Drama as a COVID-19 Information Source”
Meet the Team: Alexandria Vander Velde
“It will be interesting to see if and how COVID-19 presents itself in alternative forms of media in the future through literature, film, and art as both a roll-on effect from the pandemic and to communicate the significance of the event to future generations.” What are the main epidemics that your team focuses on? IContinueContinue reading “Meet the Team: Alexandria Vander Velde”
Media and Epidemics (MEDEP) 