World Literature in the Times of Pandemics and Plagues

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 January 2024) | Viewed by 1203

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Film and Literature, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden
Interests: children’s and Y/A literature; Astrid Lindgren studies; creative writing; science fiction; critical future studies

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Culture and Society (IKOS), Campus Norrköping at Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
Interests: children’s and Y/A literature; Astrid Lindgren studies; creative writing; science fiction; critical future studies

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Against all odds, the Covid-19 outbreak that caused the global pandemic at the beginning of 2020 spurred new hopes for an altered future. The shutdown of the world prompted technological solutions for better distance communication, hopes for global solidarity, hopes for solving the climate crisis, and new ways of thinking of communities. In summer 2022, we have returned to status quo and the pandemic has revealed global injustices, the most glaringly obvious one being the unequal vaccine distribution.

In this special issue of Humanities, we would like to invite contributions dealing with post-pandemic futures in speculative fiction, especially in World literature, opening up for alternative futures challenging the present condition. We also encourage submissions that investigate representations of societal changes in literature, concerning pandemics pre-Covid-19, pandemics during the Covid-19 outbreak, pandemics and ecocriticism (including animal studies), and the fear of new pandemics. Other topics of interest are: how the pandemic has affected our reading habits; How do we teach about pandemic literature, and do we have to rethink pedagogics concerning pandemic fiction? Finally, how has Covid-19 affected and influenced children’s and Y/A literature? How has creative writing been affected by the pandemic?

Prof. Dr. Helene Ehriander
Dr. Michael Godhe
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

9 pages, 196 KiB  
Article
“Until It Suddenly Isn’t”: Two Novels on Life after a Pandemic Disaster
by Åsa Nilsson Skåve
Humanities 2024, 13(2), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13020060 - 4 Apr 2024
Viewed by 518
Abstract
This article investigates two recent novels that deal with environmental and pandemic disasters: Severance (2018) by Ling Ma and Under the Blue (2022) by Oana Aristide. The analysis is based on ecocritical and posthumanist perspectives and on a division made by Chakrabarty (Planetary [...] Read more.
This article investigates two recent novels that deal with environmental and pandemic disasters: Severance (2018) by Ling Ma and Under the Blue (2022) by Oana Aristide. The analysis is based on ecocritical and posthumanist perspectives and on a division made by Chakrabarty (Planetary Crises and the Difficulty of Being Modern), in two different understandings of the globe: one connected to the planetary-focused discourse on global warming and the other on human-centered globalization. The clashes of these discourses are highlighted in the novels. They illustrate a process of understanding that humans are not separate from the natural world, through the disease itself and through the sudden need to survive without modern healthcare and all the comfort we are used to being able to buy. The gradual insight of the depicted characters, and perhaps also the readers of the novels, is that we live on a planet of extreme complexity and interdependence. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue World Literature in the Times of Pandemics and Plagues)
Back to TopTop