Literature & Medicine (381-0-20)

Topic

Literature of Plague and Pandemic

Instructors

Kasey Evans

Meeting Info

Parkes Hall 224: Mon, Wed 3:30PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

On May 11, 2023, the World Health Organization officially declared the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this milestone, the effects of COVID linger as we mourn people and opportunities we lost and reassess the strategies of public health advocacy and communication. Now that the epidemiological emergency has subsided, humanistic scholarship allows us to consider not so much what, exactly, happened, but why and how it has affected our attitudes, ideologies, and values. How has COVID-19 affected our civic and political participation, our social relations, and our intellectual culture? How does the cultural aftermath of COVID-19 compare to responses of plague and pandemic from earlier periods? What prejudices and biases emerge during pandemics, and with what consequences? How does literature help us to assign meaning to collective experiences of disease? Course readings are organized into three units: the bubonic plague in medieval and early modern Europe, the AIDS epidemic in the US in the late-twentieth century, and the emerging literature of COVID-19 by contemporary Anglophone writers. Assignments include collaborative annotations on Canvas, a podcast episode to be completed in small groups, short weekly writing assignments, and a final essay or creative project.

Class Materials (Suggested)

Texts include:

Eula Biss. (2015). On Immunity: An Inoculation. ISBN 978-1555977207.
Ling Ma. (2018). Severance. ISBN 978-1250214997.
Sapphire. (2021). Push. (Original pub. 1996). ISBN 978-0593314609.
Michael Cunningham. (2024). Day. ISBN 978-0399591365.
Mark Doty. (1995). Atlantis. ISBN 978-0060951061.
Pamela Sneed. (2020). Funeral Diva. ISBN 978-0872868113.

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area