Pandemics, Their Causes and Consequences: A CAHSS Webinar
Curated by Dr. Raymond-Jean Frontain
Frontain (Ph.D. Purdue University) teaches courses on AIDS literature, the Bible as literature, and ancient Greek theater. He is the author or editor of seven books and more than 100 scholarly articles, including The Theater of Terrence McNally: Something about Grace (2019) and the Divine Poems volume in the ten-volume Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne (expected fall 2020). He has been a visiting professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai, and has lectured widely in India.
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October 18: “The Morality of Pandemic”: Early communities, like those represented in Homer’s The Illiad and Sophocles’s Oedipus the King, sought a specific cause for the outbreak of widespread sickness. They most often located it in a specific moral lapse that the gods were intent on punishing. The biblical Book of Job, conversely, rejects this theory of moral causation and asserts that humans can never expect to understand fully why bad things happen to good and, even, morally indifferent people. Presenter: Dr. Raymond-Jean Frontain (English). Panelists: Dr. Kimberly Little (History) and Dr. Benjamin Rider (Philosophy).
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October 25: “The Salvation of Plague”: Shared sickness and pending widescale destruction can, paradoxically, provide rich opportunities for individual and cultural renewal. Witness the effulgence of American gay literature, theater and film created in response to the AIDS pandemic. Presenter: Dr. Raymond-Jean Frontain (English). Panelists: Dr. Keith Corson (Film) and Dr. Taine Duncan (Philosophy).
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November 1: “The Politics of Pandemic”: As Susan Sontag observes, the imagery of plague and pandemic is often appropriated for political purposes. What political resonance has been attached to the Covid-19 crisis? Presenter: Dr. Raymond-Jean Frontain. Panelists: Dr. Eric Bowne (Anthropology) and Dr. Zach Smith (History).