In our previous discussion on Ibsen’s Ghosts, we interpreted what Mrs. Alving means by her use of ghosts in the following passage: “Ghosts. When I heard Regine and Oswald in there, it was just like seeing ghosts. But then I’m inclined to think that we are all ghosts, Pastor Manders, every one of us. It’s […]
Read More →Yesterday, December 1st, was World AIDS Day, an international day designated to further awareness about the AIDS pandemic and evaluate the world’s progress in ending it. Each year international agencies such as WHO (World Health Organization), UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS) and other grassroots organizations dedicated to tackle HIV/AIDS also choose themes for […]
Read More →Donald Trump may be (outwardly) the most powerful COVID denier in the world, but he is not the only one. Denialism runs deep inside the minds of people, whether due to their distorted allegiance to rationality (or rationalization) or thanks to the conditioned privilege of not encountering catastrophes on a daily basis before the […]
Read More →Defoe illustrates in great detail how the face of London drastically changed as a result of the plague. Once a cosmopolitan, buzzing city, he now describes it as “desolate”, stating that “London might well be all in tears”. This dark description of a once lively city reminded me of the impact that the pandemic had […]
Read More →The following is an excerpt from an article written by Jonathan Rauch for the Atlantic about a political ‘disease’ in America that he has dubbed the ‘chaos syndrome’. It reminded me of the chaos prevalent in Pushkin’s play that the conveners’ discussed earlier and that time we talked about the similarities between a demagogue like […]
Read More →Above: How Nerdfighters talk about Zika. Below: How US military dudes do: And here’s a Jamaican Health Ministry PSA: What difference does it make how we imagine — and talk about — disease? Welcome to #contagion16.
Read More →I found this really interesting article on The Economist about China’s biggest health scandal: the AIDS Scandal. I feel that it’s written very much from the western perspective. However, it provides a great insight into the China’s biggest health scandal. The article also quotes Yan Lianke, the author of Dream of Ding Village, in the […]
Read More →As we all found out by reading Lianke’s Dream of Ding Village, in the early 90s, the Chinese higher-ups stared a campaign called the Plasma Economy to encourage locals to sell their blood and thus boost their income. Easy money, isn’t it? Go, sit, give your blood, come home with new red silk jacket. Completely […]
Read More →On the 23rd of July 2014, Barack Obama spoke at a $32,400 per plate fundraiser. Meanwhile, Vladimir Yakunin, a Russian businessman whose assets are being frozen and his visas blocked, updated his Facebook page with pictures of his family sailing in the Caribbean. These factoids are especially crucial to us, analysts of Pushkin’s ‘A Feast […]
Read More →From today’s class discussion on Welcome to Our Hillbrow, we identified a number of themes that emerge in the text, such as xenophobia in South Africa and the issue of cultural identity. Another important aspect of the novel is euphemism and metaphor, of which soccer (a.k.a. football) is a notable example. In both the novel and […]
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