Epidemics in Past and Present

© exc

Epidemics. Perspectives from cultural studies

Epidemics from antiquity to the present: how they have been represented in the arts and media is something that researchers from the Cluster of Excellence explain in the new dossier “Epidemics. Perspectives from cultural studies”. The short texts and images offer different disciplinary approaches to epidemics. Read the dossier

  • The role of reading and the function of literature in times of crisis

    © Peter Lang Verlag

    Literary scholar Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf has published a special issue entitled ‘Reading (in) the Epidemic’ on literature in times of epidemics, the articles ranging from the plague to the corona pandemic. The issue emerged from the online dossier ‘Epidemics’ that the Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’ produced, and is published in Peter Lang’s literature for readers series.

    Literary scholars explore in their individual articles the question of how literature depicts pandemics and epidemics, and the broader implications that literature draws from the issue. Read more

© Unsplash/Grant Whitty, Smlg. Archäologie und Museum Baselland, wikimedia commons, unsplash/Tom Radetzki

Epidemics, religions, and conspiracy theories

The dossier "Religion and conspiracy theories in the time of the corona epidemic" explores the connection and difference between religion and conspiracy theories in the time of the pandemic. Read the dossier

  • “Between Divine Punishment and Conspiracy Theories”

    © Campus Verlag

    The Cluster of Excellence’s research on epidemics from antiquity to the present has been brought together in a volume entitled Between Divine Punishment and Conspiracy Theories. The volume deals with conspiracy theories and alternative theological interpretations that emerge in times of epidemics both past and present. “What disturbed liberal milieus convinced of the evidence provided by medical-scientific expertise in the Corona pandemic is not new for times of epidemics”, underline the volume’s editors, historians Marcel Bubert and André Krischer. “Competing interpretations of epidemics have emerged time and again”. The volume is the first to shed light on such competing interpretations in an interdisciplinary and trans-epochal way. Read more