pandemic

Essays
Food Pasts, Food Futures: The Culinary History of COVID-19

Food Pasts, Food Futures: The Culinary History of COVID-19

A criti-fictional course-syllabus from the year 2070 — a bibliographical meteor from the other side of a “Remote Revolution”. more

“The Mark of the Beast”: Georgian Britain’s Anti-Vaxxer Movement

“The Mark of the Beast”: Georgian Britain’s Anti-Vaxxer Movement

Ox-faced children, elderly women sprouting horns, and cloven minds — all features attributed to Edward Jenner’s vaccine against smallpox. Introducing us to the original anti-vaxxers, Erica X Eisen explores the “vacca” in the first-ever vaccine: its bovine origins and the widespread worry that immunity came with beastly side effects. more

Laughter in the Time of Cholera

Laughter in the Time of Cholera

Political instability, popular unrest, and an impending pandemic? Welcome to France in the early 1830s. Vlad Solomon explores what made Parisians laugh in a moment of crisis through the prism of a vaudeville play. more