This volume provides a multi-nuanced analysis of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on various aspects of human existence, encompassing societal, economic, and inter-relational dimensions. It highlights a broad range of artistic and literary experiences that unfolded as a consequence of the pandemic or speak to that time.
The book revisits pandemic-induced shifts, phenomenologically, including the digitization of art and representations of creativity, “performance” anxiety, socio-political climate determined by “racial algorithms,” gaming surges, employment insecurities, mental health issues from a pedagogical materiality, and the nature of apocalypse through literary reimaginations. It also delves into the global food crisis, reframing of family structures, and local subjectivities as lived experiences.
A unique contribution, the book will be useful for students and researchers of cultural studies, digital humanities, mass media, sociology, mental health, psychology, medical anthropology, public health, literature, history of pandemics and epidemics, and South Asian studies.
Introduction PANDEMIC PANORAMAS: NARRATIVES IN THE TIME OF CONTAGION 1. Epidemic, Oriental Anxiety, and Plague Poetics in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man 2. Thy will be Done: Examining the Metaphysics of the Graphic Renditions of Pandemics 3. ‘Performance’ of Survival in a Post-apocalyptic World: Examining Art in Emily St. Mandel’s Station Eleven PHILOSOPHIZING THE PANDEMIC: AFFECT, CRITIQUE AND LANGUAGE 4. Last Word: The Linguistic Response to Epidemics 5. “My Race is not My Virus”: Affective Racial Algorithms during Covid-19 Pandemic 6. Deathly Games: Playing in the Pandemic PANDEMIC TRANSITIONS: FROM PHYSICAL TO VIRTUAL 7. Teaching (in) Pandemic: Lessons Lost, Lessons Learned 8. Cyber in the Pandemic Art 9. Digital Theatre: The Personal is Political PUNCTUATING THE PANDEMIC: THE AUDIO-VISUAL EXPRESSIONS IN COVID-19 10. Burning Hope: Caste and Pandemic in Nagraj Manjule’s Vaikunth 11. “Shared Solitude”: Reframing Family Portraits in the Time of Pandemic 12. Lived through Covid-19 Pandemic: Understanding Lived Experience Through Haryanvi Folk Songs
Simi Malhotra is Professor, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, India. Ruchi Nagpal has earned her doctoral degree from the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, India. Steven S. George is a Ph.D. scholar at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, India. Sananda Roy has earned her doctoral degree from the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, India.
