TY - JOUR
T1 - Pandemic Patterns
T2 - How Artistic Depictions of Past Epidemics Illuminate Thematic and Structural Responses to COVID-19 Today
AU - Hanson, Marta
AU - Small, Lauren
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank the AfterWards program at Johns Hopkins University for providing the first opportunity to present our work as well as the close attention to clarity of expression and many insightful comments of the JGIM journal editors and anonymous reviewers. Our AfterWards audience and reviewers collectively improved this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, Society of General Internal Medicine.
PY - 2022/3
Y1 - 2022/3
N2 - From the beginning of recorded history, human beings have encountered epidemics. They have also memorialized these events, which can be deeply traumatic and scarring, in visual art and literature. In this article, we look at a selection of artistic depictions of past epidemics in Western culture in light of what they can teach us about COVID-19 today. Our analysis reveals that while responses to epidemics are culturally bound to specific times and places, they also share common features. What surfaces again and again are pandemic patterns: persistent themes, such as divine revelation, “othering,” freedom, and exile, girded by a four-part dramaturgical structure as originally articulated by medical historian Charles Rosenberg. We argue that our response to COVID-19 is neither uniformly progressive nor linear, but rather circular or overlapping in time and space. COVID-19 may feel new to us, but in important ways, it is quite old. It has awoken an ancient and durable human script, laid out and reenacted over thousands of years. Understanding these pandemic patterns may help clinicians and health policy makers alike better craft a response to COVID-19 today and to the future epidemics that undoubtedly will come.
AB - From the beginning of recorded history, human beings have encountered epidemics. They have also memorialized these events, which can be deeply traumatic and scarring, in visual art and literature. In this article, we look at a selection of artistic depictions of past epidemics in Western culture in light of what they can teach us about COVID-19 today. Our analysis reveals that while responses to epidemics are culturally bound to specific times and places, they also share common features. What surfaces again and again are pandemic patterns: persistent themes, such as divine revelation, “othering,” freedom, and exile, girded by a four-part dramaturgical structure as originally articulated by medical historian Charles Rosenberg. We argue that our response to COVID-19 is neither uniformly progressive nor linear, but rather circular or overlapping in time and space. COVID-19 may feel new to us, but in important ways, it is quite old. It has awoken an ancient and durable human script, laid out and reenacted over thousands of years. Understanding these pandemic patterns may help clinicians and health policy makers alike better craft a response to COVID-19 today and to the future epidemics that undoubtedly will come.
KW - COVID-19 patterns
KW - Dramaturgic structure
KW - Epidemics in culture
KW - Pandemic tropes
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U2 - 10.1007/s11606-021-07214-5
DO - 10.1007/s11606-021-07214-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 34981353
AN - SCOPUS:85122236482
SN - 0884-8734
VL - 37
SP - 878
EP - 884
JO - Journal of general internal medicine
JF - Journal of general internal medicine
IS - 4
ER -