Humanities Connections
A Humanities Collection of Media Artifacts
Plague in History
- Samuel Pepys's DiarySamuel Pepys is known for keeping an extensive diary that records, famously, the Great Fire of London (1666), as well as a major plague outbreak in 1665. His firsthand account of the development of the plague, from rumors abroad to daily threat, offers historical insight into the spread of epidemics.
- 'Mask Slackers' and 'Deadly' Spit: The 1918 Flu Campaigns to Shame People Into Following New RulesThis article from the History Channel highlights public health campaigns during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, and the similarities to the rhetoric employed during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020.
- Did Flying Corpses Spread the Plague? - Ask a MorticianCaitlin Doughty, author of "Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?" and founder of the Order of the Good Death, tackles perceptions about the plague, plague bodies, and the Middle Ages in this informative and darkly humorous video.
"Our Plague Year" Seems To Be A Very Popular Title
- Our Plague Year, the PodcastJoseph Fink (Welcome to Night Vale, Alice Isn't Dead) created a podcast that ran from March 13, 2020, to July 10, 2021, documenting the anxieties, learnings, and reflections of the COVID-19 pandemic during that period. Many guest speakers are featured as well.
- Our Plague Year, the WebcomicArtist Nick Burton creates an alternate retelling of the Eyam Plague of 1665-1666, exploring themes relevant to the experience of COVID-19 in the present day. The webcomic updates weekly.
- Our Plague Year, the ArticleEliot Cohen of the Atlantic writes of the importance of storytellers and poets as much as scientists and engineers in times of great crisis.
Plagues and Pandemics in Games
- The Corrupted Blood Incident of 2005
In the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft, an unexpected oversight led to an in-game plague that ravaged the game world and which led to some startling sociological and epidemiological research outcomes. - Pandemic
The quintessential pandemic simulation game (it's right in the title), Pandemic is a cooperative board game for two to four players, in which players take on unique roles to strategize and prevent the spread of four deadly diseases, with different effects, vectors of transmission, and levels of virulence. The players win if they stop all four before time runs out.