“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?”
Tag Archives: pandemic
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”
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”
Disparaging Doctors and Mocking Masks: Medical and Media Relations during the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic in Southern California
Open air barber shop during influenza epidemic. Reference: University of California, Berkeley, California, Wikimedia Commons. At the Media and Epidemics: Technologies of Science Communication and Public Health, 20th-21st Centuries Conference, held at the University of Bucharest in May 2024, panellist contributions revealed the prominent position of newspapers in promulgating medical truths or untruths, of shapingContinueContinue reading “Disparaging Doctors and Mocking Masks: Medical and Media Relations during the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic in Southern California”
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) 