FF Network 54 (original) (raw)

Buried alive? The surreal story of how COVID took over a remote city in the Amazon

2025

This is a piece I contributed to The Conversation. It's part of my wider research project in Iquitos and describes the surreal story of how COVID took over a remote city in the Peruvian Amazon. Available here: https://theconversation.com/buried-alive-the-surreal-story-of-how-covid-took-over-a-remote-city-in-the-amazon-244596

Nature Is Healing: Reading COVID-19 Narratives Through the Fantasy of Infinite Nature at Chernobyl

CR: The New Centennial Review, 2022

In August 2020, I found myself in Istanbul during a brief ebb between COVID-19 pandemic waves. The city was gripped with a heat wave that left its maskwearing citizens sweltering, and in an effort to escape the overwhelming grip of the sun I walked west along the northern coastline of the Sea of Marmara. The wind off the sea was cool, and Turkish families with small children waded in the shallows. The water was full of ghostly jellyfish. Suddenly a cry went up: The curve of a dolphin's back had been spotted. Then another; a third one. The pod of dolphins was diving for fish, herding its prey into the angle of an outcropping where the dolphins could feast at leisure. Later, I read in an article from Agence France-Presse that the dolphins had returned to Istanbul as a result of the coronavirus: "Dolphins swim in the Bosphorus as virus silences Istanbul" N a t u r e I s H e a l i n g 96 l (AFP New Agency 2020), the headline said. It was an example of a news genre that had emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, distinguished by the announcement that this-wild-animal-or-another had suddenly appeared in a space that had once been seen as resolutely de-wilded. Swans and fish retook the canals of Venice; wild boars and hawks frequented European cities; a small town in Wales was suddenly overtaken by goats. So frequent and so uncritically embraced were these stories that they spawned a sarcastic meme in which an image of a decidedly unnatural presence (e-scooters, photoshopped dinosaurs, or inflatable toys) is combined with a caption that reads: "Nature is healing. We are the virus" (Figures 1 and 2; see Bosworth [2021] for an analysis of this meme's subversive potential).

Contamination: The Case of Civets, Companionship, COVID, and SARS

Journal of applied animal welfare science : JAAWS, 2022

This research explores the intersection between zoonosis and the trade in wild animals by applying the Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) as a lens through which to analyse the ways humans and animals shape, and are shaped by, multi-species entanglements. Civets occupy a unique space within contemporary human-animal relations, as they have become an increasingly popular companion species despite being vectors of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus. The 2002 SARS outbreak not only killed 774 humans, but its confirmed species origin instigated the retribution-like public slaughter of an estimated 10,000 civets. Guided by the theory of "contamination", this paper compares human-civet relations during SARS and COVID-19 outbreaks through content analysis of global news media and the social media activity of "Civet Lover" clubs, dedicated social spaces for civet pet keeping enthusiasts. Results show that amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the civ...

Pandemic Protagonists. Viral (Re)Actions in Pandemic and Corona Fictions. Conference Report

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023

The interdisciplinary conference entitled Pandemic Protagonists. Viral (Re)Actions in Pandemic and Corona Fictions was held as part of the Corona Fictions project 2 from June 1 st to June 3 rd , 2023, at Graz University of Technology. It marked the culmination of a year of joint work on the recently published volume of the same title 3 , which stood at the center of the conference. Within this framework, the organising committee 4 invited all scholars whose contributions had appeared in the volume.

[Graphic Medicine] Anthologising COVID: An Interview with Kendra Boileau and Michael Green

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics , 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly one of the most significant bio-socio-economic crisis of the early 21st century. Amid the fear, anger, hope, anxiety, disorientation, and uncertainty of the times, Graphic Mundi published COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology (2021), and Distant Connections published a comic series titled The Lockdown Lowdown. COVID Chronicles, edited by Kendra Boileau and Rich Johnson, includes 64 mini-comics from 70 contributors and offers an insight into the various lived experiences of the pandemic. Similarly, The Lockdown Lowdown series comprising of two zines and a special issue (on women and COVID-19), features artists from diverse backgrounds and geographical locations (such as Europe, the USA, and China), exploring the challenges and possibilities within the new normal. Taking these cues, Kendra Boileau and Michael Green share their experience of anthologising COVID comics through an email interview. The interview is divided into two parts. In Part A, titled ‘Suddenly our world changed completely,’ Boileau and Green answer questions common to both of them, and in Part B, titled ‘When can we give grandad a hug?’ they answer questions specific to the anthologies in discussion while also giving the reader a peek into their creative/editorial processes.

Anthropologists Approach and Corona pandemic -an online lecture for ASPIRE

The pandemics are neither new to human race nor to anthropologists. The Corona pandemic is one like them .Currently, Covid-19 is a disease on a global scale, but it is not a universal phenomenon. Anthropological research is essential for placing it in context. The corona virus outbreak raises fundamental questions about the politics and narratives of crisis, as well as about our “ordinary” everyday lives and sociality.

Divergent stories? Narrating ancient and current reactions to pandemics

Horitzó. Revista de ciències de la religió 5, 2024, pp. 67-79, 2024

Although this recent COVID virus is new, it is well known that this pandemic, in its medical characteristics, in its impact on the population and even in its social and economic repercussions, is nothing new. There is a long tradition of previous pandemics that have affected Western culture and have left literary footprints over the centuries. Pandemics generally share common features: the description of the symptoms, the response of the authorities, even the lockdown of the population, are recurring, and help us to see the current situation with some perspective. However, despite the similarities in the way illness has been metaphorized over the centuries, the divergences are particularly striking: while in ancient and medieval literary accounts illness is seen, in a metaphorical reading, as a moral, social and natural disorder as a whole, and the reaction of the majority of society is always a moral upheaval that leads to the loss of religious and ethical values, in current accounts, the media narrative emphasises shared feelings, popular gestures, and hopeful mimetism that have occurred all over the world. As a result, our civic values and religious belief systems, far from weakening, have been even strengthened. In order to clearly delineate an area for analysis, I will mainly focus on the social reactions to the pandemics described by Thucydides (5th century BC) and by Procopius of Caesarea (6th century AD) and contrast them with social reactions during the current pandemic, especially through media narratives such as news reports and political slogans. I will try to establish the devices in constructing of a story about the pandemic in each cultural context, and to illustrate how the ancient metaphors can be used to better understand the collective story of the current pandemic.

Nature, Culture and COVID-19—Towards a Global History of Pandemics

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia

From a historical perspective, SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 have simultaneously led to known and previously unknown events as well. These seamlessly linked events can only be grasped with a new, integrative perspective of the relationship between culture and disease. Such a view requires a historiography that captures the full spectrum of an epidemic event, from the causes of emerging pathogens to their global spread and impact on different national, regional, and local communities. Integrative approaches to a global history of epidemics essentially include the following: –Understanding the dynamic relationship between nature and culture to empirically capture changes in local and regional biospheres and their interaction in global contexts. –Investigating the culturally determined scientific and social negotiation processes that lead to the naming, characterization and communication of initially unknown causes of disease in relation to the culturally determined countermeasures that beg...

What Does a Pandemic Sound Like: The Emergence of COVID Verbal Art

Anthropologica, 2021

In times of social upheaval, people create and engage with verbal art for entertainment and a feeling of connection. While millions of people were forced to stay home to reduce the spread of COVID-19 from March to July 2020, verbal artists posted recorded performances online and viewers had more time than usual to watch and share them. COVID verbal art refers to songs, poems, and comedy skits that mention social and physical distancing, quarantine and isolation, hygiene and cleaning practices, everyday experiences during the pandemic, as well as social and political critiques of policies and practices that explicitly mention COVID-19 or coronavirus. An examination of 227 verbal art performances posted on YouTube and TikTok provides an ethnographic record of how everyday life has changed over time during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the focus shifted from initial confusion to political critique.