The Plague Years: Reflecting on Pandemics

— —

Michael Titlestad (University of the Witwatersrand, SA) Karl van Wyk (University of the Witwatersrand, SA)

The Plague Years

Reflecting on Pandemics

Michael Titlestad (University of the Witwatersrand, SA), Karl van Wyk (University of the Witwatersrand, SA), Grace A. Musila (University of the Witwatersrand, SA)

$83.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Routledge
27 May 2024

Literary studies: general; Epidemiology & medical statistics

The Plague Years collects scholarly and essayistic reflections on literary, visual, and sonic representations of the COVID-19 and other pandemics. These are placed alongside poetry and short fiction written in the first two years of quarantine or isolation. This range expresses the intellectual and imaginative struggle and ingenuity entailed in coming to terms with the rampant spread of disease and its emotional, cultural, and political consequences.

The contributions are from diverse contexts: Africa (from Egypt to South Africa), China, Japan, the US, and Scandinavia. They consider some of the array of contemporary engagements: poems translated from Mandarin about the traumas of the frontline, Chinese calligraphic poetry printed on cartons of PPE, comments on the literary history of representing epidemics and pandemics, political analyses of the post-truth present, and the role of life-writing and gaming in an interrupted world. Given the generative and creative obliquity of many of its parts, this collection shifts how one thinks about the diseased present and the archival pasts on which it draws.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of English Studies in Africa.

Edited by: Michael Titlestad (University of the Witwatersrand SA), Karl van Wyk (University of the Witwatersrand, SA), Grace A. Musila (University of the Witwatersrand, SA)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 246mm, Width: 174mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9781032286846
ISBN 10: 1032286849
Pages: 270
Publication Date: 27 May 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Michael Titlestad is Personal Professor in the Department of English at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has widely published in the fields of maritime, South African, and dystopian literature, and he is the editor of English Studies in Africa. His most recent book is Shipwreck Narratives: Out of Our Depth (2021). Karl van Wyk is Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He began teaching in the English Department at the beginning of 2021. His research and publication interests include postmodern historiography. He is particularly concerned with WWII alternate history and South Africa’s attitudes to, and representations of, apartheid history. Grace A. Musila is Associate Professor in the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. She is the editor of Wangari Maathai’s Registers of Freedom (2020), and the author of A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour: Kenya, Britain and the Julie Ward Murder (2015).