About the Pandemic Narratives Project

This research initiative brings together scholars from East and West campus who study the  impact of illness on human society. Drawing on the strengths of narrative medicine our research group will explore  global pandemics as objects of historical and contemporary concern. Narrative medicine takes  seriously the telling and analysis of stories of illness experiences and events, by doctors,  patients and their families, nurses, and other health care practitioners. As a field, it is  distinguished by its inclusive perspective taking and critical attention to fraught scenarios  where different stakeholders are legitimately positioned to advocate for different resolutions to  ubiquitous predicaments by virtue of their diverse backgrounds. Capturing the far-reaching effects of pandemics is a fitting application of this endeavor: how can we keep a whole  population safe while attending to the consequences to specific vulnerable groups (e.g. the elderly in isolation; victims of child and domestic abuse; disabled communities; those who  suffer from mental illness)? Our goal is to integrate new perspectives from the STEM fields,  humanities, and social sciences into an interdisciplinary whole.

As a faculty group, we are identifying topics where different disciplinary approaches intersect and whose analytical tools can  productively enrich our broader understanding of pandemics and society. The contradictory  nature of the world in pandemic, its cycles and immobility, glut of information and indifference,  privileges and inequalities, calls for interdisciplinary examination. Untangling the narratives  imposed on us from those that we create is imperative to coping with this and future  pandemics. We are particularly invested in grappling with the politics of illness and disability  as it intersects with the politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality. 

These innovative projects will help us think about how best to  communicate and document illness experiences and events as well as how to bring together  qualitative and quantitative, textual and visual, global and local perspectives and resources to  ensure diversity in the documentation of pandemic effects. This commitment to exploration  and experimentation in the making and sharing of knowledge is a key goal of our project.