COVID-19 Health Humanities Resources

• #coronavirussyllabus—This crowdsourced cross-disciplinary resource—initiated by Alondra Nelson (President of The Social Science Research Council, and a recent speaker at Pitt in Africana Studies, Human Genetics, and the Center for Bioethics and Health Law)—lists resources examining myriad aspects of the current and past pandemics, including economic, historical, and psychological aspects, as well as literary and artistic treatments.

• Humanities Coronavirus Syllabus edited by Sari Altschuler and Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Department of English, Northeastern University

• Treating “Yellow Peril”—Resources to Address Coronavirus Racism—Recommended by Mari Webel, this crowdsourced Google doc contains resources to address the racialized anxieties that have become a dominant frame through which people evaluate the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes some English-language news reports from Asia and Europe, as well as news reports and academic analysis of COVID-19-related xenophobia.

The Decameron Project—This short story collection resulted from an invitation the New York Times issued to 29 authors to write new short stories inspired by the moment. The invitation was inspired by Boccaccio’s The Decameron, which  Rivka Galchan discusses in her essay—all presented with innovative, animated illustrations by Sophy Hollington.

On Exactitude in Science by Jorge Luis Borges—This very brief story reminds us that scientific models are simplifications of the real world, only as good as the data used to create them and fraught with challenges in their actual use. In a podcast from The Guardian, Will Self reads the story (minutes :55 - 2:30), and then discusses it.

The Sum of Us, written and read by Tony Walsh, the poem of this pandemic.

The Wish for a Good Young Country Doctor by Allan Gurganus—in The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus, 2021—describes a cholera outbreak in a small town in 1849 and prompts questions about how the healthcare heroes of the current pandemic will be remembered in the future.

Support a local independent bookstore like City of Asylum Bookstore or The White Whale, including on-line bookshop.  Learn Why it’s so hard to read a book right now, explained by a neuroscientist. At the same time, consider this brief NPR story: 'A Matter Of Common Decency': What Literature Can Teach Us About Epidemics, or this 42-minute interview with Stephen King, explaining why reading in the horror genre can help some people manage anxiety.

Grieving Loved Ones Lost To COVID-19, A Writer Turns To Books is an NPR interview with Zibby Owens who hosts the podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. She discusses her October 2020 Washington Post commentary, 15 Books that helped me cope after losing loved ones to COVID-19.

Blindness by Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago describes a government’s authoritarian response to a rapidly growing number of people within a city who find themselves unable to see.

The Children’s Hospital by pediatrician Chris Adrian tells of a floating hospital—the only thing to survive an apocalyptic flood of the Earth—and a third-year medical student who finds herself gifted with strange powers of healing.

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann explores desire, self-interest, aging, social norms, and falsehoods told by governments to citizens and tourists, and by people to each other and themselves.

A Journal of the Plague Year—Daniel Defoe’s realistic account of the bubonic plague that killed one quarter of London’s population in 18 months 1665–1666.

Inspired by towns that quarantined themselves during the 1918 epidemic, The Last Town on Earth, by Thomas Mullen, is set in the Pacific Northwest mill town of Commonwealth. Originally conceived as a haven for workers weary of exploitation, Commonwealth is threatened by world war, domestic division and mistrust, and a deadly contagion raging across the US. The town votes to quarantine itself, but Commonwealth’s inhabitants find their values as threatened as their health.

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is not merely the title that is being parodied for articles about “life or love in the time of COVID-19,” but a beautiful novel by Colombian Nobel prize winner Marquez, set in 1870–1930,  exploring love, aging, and death during wars and outbreaks of cholera. 

Monogamy, by Sue Miller, is recommended by Zibby Owens to read during this pandemic. One of its characters observes: “we read fiction because it suggests that life has a shape, and we feel … consoled …. Consoled to think that life isn’t just one damned thing after another. That it has sequence and consequence. … [F]ictional narrative made life seem to matter, … it pushed away the meaninglessness of death.”

Martin Marten by Brian Doyle, published in 2015, demonstrates in beautiful prose how human and nonhuman beings are similar and interconnected. It also reveals how a community is constituted by people who help each other, while respecting each other’s independence and differences. In short, the novel has insights very relevant to these pandemic times, while taking readers away from COVID concerns to life on a mountain, near a river, where martens are fleet-footed in the tree canopy.

Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter, a novel of 1918 Influenza epidemic—recommended by Bridget Keown

The Plague by Albert Camus—recommended by Jason Rosenstock and assigned in Pitt Med’s elective, Pandemic in Medicine and Society

Emma Donoghue  began Pull of the Stars in 2018 on the centenary of the 1918 flu pandemic and submitted the finished manuscript two days before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. Its title is drawn from the translation of ‘influenza’, and its content depicts the effort of a nurse working in an Irish hospital’s maternity influenza ward as she tries to save the lives of her patients from the 1918 flu that disproportionately affected pregnant women with higher infection and death rates, as well as miscarriages, still births, and children with congenital anomalies.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel—Taking place in the Great Lakes region after a fictional swine flu pandemic, known as the “Georgia Flu,” has devastated the world and killed most of the population, this novel follows a small troupe of actors and musicians, “The Traveling Symphony,” who have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive.

The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera, a political scientist, who writes novels of crime and corruption in Mexico—This one involves two crime families at war following a plague.

Weather by Jenny Offill—While explicitly addressing climate change, this novel felt very relevant to Emily Wanderer for coronavirus as well.

In What Are You Going Through, published by Sigrid Nunez in September 2020, a woman relates and responds to the stories of the people she encounters during a period of her life both normal and remarkable. She stays with a friend who plans her own death, beating cancer to the punch; she portrays the argument of an academic speaker who has a rigorously accurate and uniformly negative view of the future of the planet and its inhabitants. Both threads, and the normal life surrounding them, seem quite comforting during the pandemic.

Three novels focus on epidemics and memory:

• In The Book of M by Peng Shepherd, the first sign of infection is that people notice they cast no shadow, and then they begin to lose their memories
• In Find Me by Laura van den Berg, the infection erases people’s memories and kills memories, but the protagonist is immune and uses the opportunity to enroll in a medical study as a way to craft her identity
• In Severance by Ling Ma, set in a reimagined past in New York at roughly the time of Occupy Wall Street, Shen Fever makes people endlessly repeat old routines unto death, providing a powerful metaphor for the way the past can entrap and burden us. Ma commented that the animating question of the novel is “why does the China-born protagonist Candace Chen keep working at her job?”

Long Covid Isn’t as Unique as We Thought—The nagging symptoms long-haulers experience reveal a frustrating blind spot in medicine, by Julia Belluz, reveals lessons for medicine and philosophy of medicine, March 11, 2021

V is for Veracity, by Jenny Reardon, reveals the risks of embracing war metaphors in responding to COVID-19, June 4, 2020

Cleanliness and good hygiene are vested with multiple meanings in this time of pandemic: some focus on caring for others; some are used to label and pressure others as sources of contagion. In addition to analyzing these meanings, Clean in Times of Covid-19: on Hygiene and Pollution addresses the impact on our environment of our ways of being clean to be safe from COVID-19, May 3, 2020

What Our Contagion Fables are Really About, by historian Jill Lapore, The New Yorker, March 23, 2020

Pandemics from Homer to Stephen King: what we can learn from literary history by Chelsea Haith for The Conversation, March 16, 2020

On writing the Great COVID-19 Novel—two essays, both humorous and insightful:

• Someday, We’ll Look Back on All of This and Write a Novel, by Sloane Crosley

• One Pandemic. Thousands of Ledes.—Bill Grueskin invited readers to write the opening line to The Great COVID-19 novel, a version of the annual “It was a dark and stormy night” contest (the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest). Some of the 23,000 responses he received are published in this essay, capturing poignant, frightening, funny, and cynical responses to the pandemic.

Writing the Virus, edited by Andrea Scrima and David Dario Winner, gathers reflections by 31 writers who were invited by the literary journal StatORec to reflect on the pandemic.

After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion, 2019, by Anthony Petro, demonstrates how religious leaders shaped debates over sexual morality and public health during the AIDS crisis. (Recommended by Rachel Kranson)

Ancient Rome Has an Urgent Warning for Us, by classics professor Kyle Harper, notes that the Antonine Plague might have been one of history’s first pandemics, and argues that “living through a pandemic not only causes us to see different layers of the past, but can also inspire us to listen to our ancient sources more empathetically,” New York Times, February 15, 2021.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry examines, with particular relevance for today, governments’ responses and lack of response to the 1918 flu pandemic. It is reported that George W. Bush’s reading of the book prompted him to initiate a comprehensive pandemic plan, some of which was realized and formed a foundation for the current federal response to COVID-19, and some of which was not sustained. Barry discussed his book in an On the Media interview on November 27, 2020.

History suggests the pandemic may permanently alter our way of life:

• ‘The 1918 flu is still with us’: The deadliest pandemic ever is still causing problems today, Washington Post, September 3, 2020
• How Tuberculosis Shaped Victorian Fashion, Smithsonian Magazine, May 10, 2016

Writers on economics and technology agree:

In How Pandemics End, science writer Gina Kolata describes—in relation to past pandemics and the current crisis—the difference between a pandemic ending socially and medically

Nature reviewed its top five suggestions for histories to help us understand the current pandemic:

• Historian Frank Snowden argues that infectious diseases have shaped social evolution no less powerfully than have wars, revolutions and economic crises. (5 min read, from 2019)
• The story of the race to stop a plague epidemic in San Francisco that broke out in 1900 is a rich history of epidemiology, political wrangling and scientific denialism. (6 min read, from 2019)
• The 1918 influenza pandemic probably infected 500 million people — one-third of the world’s population at the time. There was a wide-ranging failure of medicine and governments — which is one reason why its history has been long neglected. (5 min read, from 2017)
• An analysis of the fraught campaign to contain the 2013–16 Ebola crisis reveals the common threads of dysfunction that run through responses to epidemics. (5 min read, from 2018)
• Rediscover pioneering epidemiologist and anaesthesiologist John Snow and his meticulous mapping of the cholera epidemic in London. (5 min read, from 2013)

Pandemic, Creating a Usable Past: Epidemic History, COVID-19, and the Future of Health was presented May 8-9 by the American Association for the History of Medicine with the support of the Princeton University Department of History. The very thoughtful talks, presented for the general public by leading historians of medicine, are archived here with descriptive titles. The program included sessions on the disparate experiences of the pandemic, frontline workers’ experiences, civil liberties, surveillance practices, the spread of dubious theories, and future of public health.

In Pandemics of the Past Jon Meacham reflects on Barbara W. Tuchman’s account of the bubonic plague in her 1978 book A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century and Stephen Coss’s 2016 book The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic That Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics. The books demonstrate, Meacham argues (in his New York Times Book Review column on May 7, 2020), that the epidemics advanced civilization toward modernity and its embrace of science.

The Plague Year—The Mistakes and the Struggles Behind America’s Coronavirus Tragedy by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker, January 4 and 11, 2021

Howard Markel’s Quarantine!: Eastern European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892, published in 1999, examined the way that anti-immigrant sentiment informed the public health initiatives aimed at controlling turn-of-the-twentieth century epidemics. (Recommended by Rachel Kranson)

Visualizing the History of Pandemics—a frequently updated visual resource comparing the impact of COVID-19 to that of past pandemics, recommended by Brock Bahler

‘Write It Down’: Historian Suggests Keeping a Record of Life During Pandemic—Historian Herbert “Tico” Braun explains why it is important for us to write about our experience of this pandemic

American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19 by John Fabian Witt, 2020, provides a concise history of how the law has shaped responses to contagious disease in the US.

Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live by Nicholas Christakis, 2020; interview with the author.

On Immunity: An Inoculation, a 2014 book of essays by Eula Biss, that recounts her fears for her infant son and her exploration of concerns about vaccination.

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, by Michael Lewis, tells of the multiple Cassandras of COVID-19 who had foresight regarding the virus’s spread and toll, but who were largely disregarded.

Ten Lessons for a Post-pandemic World, by Fareed Zakaria, 2020, addresses inequality’s worsening, markets’ limitations, challenges to expertise and for experts, globalization, and when realists are new idealists.

The Viral Storm by Nathan Wolfe, 2011; NPR interview with the author and review in The Guardian

Covid Conversations, organized by Candace Skibba, is an online discussion series sponsored by the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University.

Do not open that airlock: Notes from the COVID-19 Bunker, March 28, 2020 Remains to be Seen podcast

I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Jacques Tourneur

COVID-19, Contagion, and Vaccine Optimism by Kelly McGuire “explores how pro-vaccination cultural products ​such as Contagion might in fact undermine public health efforts by promoting a false narrative, which simplifies the kind of vaccination campaign necessary for herd immunity to develop. An ethic of sacrifice and selflessness drives the public health messaging of the film but leaves intact certain individualistic tropes and plague narrative scapegoating tendencies” Journal of Medical Humanities, 2021 Mar;42(1):51-62. doi: 10.1007/s10912-021-09677-3.

The Maxo Vanka Murals, viewable online, may be Pittsburgh’s best visual entry point into consideration of the combination of economic inequality and global threat. Vanka (1889 - 1963), who painted his 25 murals in St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale in 1937-1941. served in the Belgian Red Cross during World War I. Many of his murals depict the horrors of war and of poverty. (The image of Injustice holds unbalanced scales and wears a gasmask.) As COVID-19 has many people thinking about both “putting on their own oxygen masks first” and helping those around them, Vanka’s murals may help to focus both thought and discussion. (A University of Pittsburgh focused note: Vanka’s image of Injustice is the cover image the most recent book by political scientist and Global Studies Director Michael Goodhart: Injustice: Political Theory for the Real World.)

The Life-and-Death Shift: Doctors on the Front Lines in Northern Italy—photographs by Andrea Frazzetta and text by Jason Horowitz

Named one of the top-ten art podcasts by The New York Times in March 2020, Momus: The Podcast promotes “criticism in conversation” on a variety of timely issues relating to contemporary art and the present moment. In the face of the pandemic, it is issuing new podcasts every two weeks, “staring directly at our present crisis, with an eye to both history and potential,” beginning with this question put to art historian Eleanor Nairne, curator at London’s Barbican Art Gallery: what’s changed – and what should? “This prompt was already set, but with the emerging pandemic and its irreversible effects on our economy, cultural metabolism, relationship to art, sense of agency, and connection to one other, there has never been a better time to ask it.”