Humanities Institute publication: “How We Know, What We Know: The Humanities Responds to Pandemic”

December 18, 2020

In November 2020, the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute released “How We Know, What We Know: Humanities Responds to Pandemic.” This collection of essays by Wake Forest faculty was commissioned by the Humanities Institute at the end of spring 2020; it includes historical, critical, interpretive and reflective essays from across the humanities, shedding light on the past, present and future of our emergency.

In an announcement, the Humanities Institute said:

The pandemic and resulting travel restrictions disrupted many of our colleagues’ research plans, while quarantine, outrage over racism, and the ever-changing contingencies of work and family life meant that many of us found our intellectual attention for scholarship overwhelmed. Still, our faculty have copious knowledge and a lot to say about the history, art, literature, and lived experience of quarantine, emergency, and diseases, as a result of our scholarly training in the humanities. Seeking to document and publish this base of knowledge, the Humanities Institute put out a grant for short essays which would direct disciplinary knowledge and scholarly training to some aspect of the current emergency. We are thrilled and grateful for what our colleagues produced, and this collection is the result.

Eighteen Wake Forest faculty contributed essays—and even a film—to the collection, which was edited by Aimee Mepham, Humanities Institute associate director. Dean Franco, director of the Humanities Institute and professor of English, wrote the book’s introduction.

You can read the publication online or download it as a PDF by clicking the link here.