Infection and Injustice: Narrative Dimensions in the Representation of Pandemics

Infections spread, and stories are composed: The difference between the two forms of communicability ‒ transmission and representation ‒ opens a space for reflecting on what illness means. The contributors focus on the moral and social dimensions involved in narrating pandemics, analyzing how urban dwellers, vaccine sceptics, medical experts, factory workers, colonial administrators, colonial subjects, and fictional characters try to make sense of biological threats and their implications for social order, freedom, and solidarity. The figures who populate these factual and fictional stories agree on very little in terms of treatment and prevention, but they all have one thing in common: they deploy stories against the spread of disease.

Silke Schicktanz, born in 1970, is a professor for Ethical and Cultural Studies of Biomedicine at the University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany. Her research focuses on cross-cultural bioethics, stakeholder engagement, as well as collectivity and responsibility.

Andrew S. Gross is a professor of American literature at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, vice president of the German Association of American Studies, and editor-in-chief of the New American Studies Journal. He writes about American poetry and post-WWII American literature and culture.

Richard Hölzl is a researcher at Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich and teaches at the Department of Medieval and Modern History at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. His research focuses on environmental history, history of missions, and material cultures of colonialism.