This review of Human Extinction and the Pandemic Imaginary, published by Christos Lynteris on the brink of the COVID-19 epidemic, problematises the tension between a dominant pandemic imaginary, perpetuated by outbreak preparedness policies and the media, and an emergent imaginary, historically and geographically.
Through exploring virology research and its dangers in post-Ebola Guinea, this article argues that the hypothesis of a bat reservoir has taken on a heuristic role that can be compared to the way that a fetish polarizes relations between the people who manipulate and fear this idea.
Roth, Emmanuelle. “The ‘Truth about Ebola’: Insecure Epistemologies in Post-Outbreak Forest Guinea.” PhD diss., Cambridge University, 2022. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.86766
This animated short film taps into the deep pain of the pandemic, experienced by millions of people all over the world.
What can we learn from human responses to epidemics and pandemics in history? What insights can ecological and environmental humanities perspectives provide? This new and growing collection of annotated links to open-access media (analyses, primary sources, and digital resources) helps put pandemics in context.
In this special issue on Multispecies Studies, Celia Lowe and Ursula Münster present three open-ended stories of elephant care in times of death and loss: at places of confinement and elephant suffering like the zoos in Seattle and Zürich as well as in the conflict-ridden landscapes of South India, where the country’s last free-ranging elephants live. They call attention to the Asian elephant, a species that is currently facing extinction through the elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus.
Celia Lowe asks what it means to “write life” beyond the human as viral ethnography.
