It is a mystifying fact that the 1918-19 Spanish influenza pandemic—which infected one-third of the world’s population and killed between 50-100 million—inspired almost no works of American literature. Also puzzling: of these few, the three most significant and acclaimed were written by southerners. Virginia native Willa Cather’s One of Ours (1922), Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel (1929), and Katherine […]
I too have measured out my life with coffee spoons in the endless days of the lockdown. Instant coffee, to be precise, as I follow the global Dalgona coffee phenomenon that appears daily in my ‘news’ feed. Frothy and photogenic, this take on a South Korean confection has been an easy 4 pm staple in […]
‘I do not intend to conflate ecological with epidemiological calamities, though of course they can be intimately linked’, wrote Anahid Nersessian in 2013. Can we, though, compare Covid-19 to the Anthropocene, the proposal that we have entered a new geological epoch marked by humanity’s indelible alteration of the Earth: its rock strata, ecosystems, atmosphere? The […]
Rabindranath Tagore wrote these verses at the beginning of the last century, describing what a liberated nation, and world, would appear to him. Just this January, the American actor Martin Sheen invoked Tagore beautifully at the Fire Drill climate protest rally in Washington D.C.: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held […]
In Australia, something (or other) is in the air. The worst bushfire season on record has been succeeded by COVID-19. Iconic beaches were eerily empty during the Easter holiday period, being part of the extended lockdown restrictions. Many in the south-eastern parts of the country are suffering first from drought, then from bushfire, and finally […]
Although politically progressive, Jacinda Ardern has consistently used the language of conservative, rural New Zealand throughout the COVID-19 crisis. She often does so through sport, not surprisingly given her own small town background and her husband’s job hosting a popular television series on fishing. Notably, Ardern announced the government’s decision to move to a full […]
As someone who thinks and writes about how speculative fiction helps us to navigate the ways that science and technology shape daily life, I regularly encounter proclamations that we are “living in a science fictional world.” Generally, this sentiment describes something like self-driving cars or the gene-editing possibilities of CRISPR technology—things that once seemed the […]
A viral pandemic is spidering across the globe, and so too is an emotional one. Fears and anxieties spread and mutate in whispered late-night conversations and flashing updates, working their own damage on bodies and minds. There is deep fear of the virus itself, of course, and fear as well of its economic impact. The current crisis has rendered the economic laws that govern […]
It is a mystifying fact that the 1918-19 Spanish influenza pandemic—which infected one-third of the world’s population and killed between 50-100 million—inspired almost no works of American literature. Also puzzling: of these few, the three most significant and acclaimed were written by southerners. Virginia native Willa Cather’s One of Ours (1922), Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel (1929), and Katherine […]
I too have measured out my life with coffee spoons in the endless days of the lockdown. Instant coffee, to be precise, as I follow the global Dalgona coffee phenomenon that appears daily in my ‘news’ feed. Frothy and photogenic, this take on a South Korean confection has been an easy 4 pm staple in […]
‘I do not intend to conflate ecological with epidemiological calamities, though of course they can be intimately linked’, wrote Anahid Nersessian in 2013. Can we, though, compare Covid-19 to the Anthropocene, the proposal that we have entered a new geological epoch marked by humanity’s indelible alteration of the Earth: its rock strata, ecosystems, atmosphere? The […]
Rabindranath Tagore wrote these verses at the beginning of the last century, describing what a liberated nation, and world, would appear to him. Just this January, the American actor Martin Sheen invoked Tagore beautifully at the Fire Drill climate protest rally in Washington D.C.: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held […]
In Australia, something (or other) is in the air. The worst bushfire season on record has been succeeded by COVID-19. Iconic beaches were eerily empty during the Easter holiday period, being part of the extended lockdown restrictions. Many in the south-eastern parts of the country are suffering first from drought, then from bushfire, and finally […]
Although politically progressive, Jacinda Ardern has consistently used the language of conservative, rural New Zealand throughout the COVID-19 crisis. She often does so through sport, not surprisingly given her own small town background and her husband’s job hosting a popular television series on fishing. Notably, Ardern announced the government’s decision to move to a full […]
As someone who thinks and writes about how speculative fiction helps us to navigate the ways that science and technology shape daily life, I regularly encounter proclamations that we are “living in a science fictional world.” Generally, this sentiment describes something like self-driving cars or the gene-editing possibilities of CRISPR technology—things that once seemed the […]
A viral pandemic is spidering across the globe, and so too is an emotional one. Fears and anxieties spread and mutate in whispered late-night conversations and flashing updates, working their own damage on bodies and minds. There is deep fear of the virus itself, of course, and fear as well of its economic impact. The current crisis has rendered the economic laws that govern […]
To receive updates on Literature Reflections news from Cambridge University Press and Fifteen Eighty Four, please join our email list below. We will not disclose your email address to any third party
