From Pathogens to Memes: Media, Pandemics, and Globalization

Catalog description

Plagues and epidemics have fueled narratives, imaginations, and media events when rumors and gossip spread as fast as germs and viruses. The fear and fascination with pathogens have also revised our understanding of the technology and culture of global media that are often metaphorically described as “contagious” or "viral." This seminar explores the historical and theoretical intersection between media and pandemics. Conjoining media studies, postcolonial criticism, and the history of medicine and public health in an interdisciplinary approach, we will critically examine how power, body, machines, chemicals and bio-organisms are mediated in the contexts of colonial expansion and global migration.