Cultural Narratives of Crisis and COVID-19: Metaphors, (Un)Solidarity and Political Profiteering
This lecture will address the commodification or mercantilization of the current COVID-19 crisis, and how this orientates and defines our actions, decisions and worldviews. In other words: what does this crisis reveal about ourselves and our societies? First, we will look into concrete (political) actions that dominated the news, then we move to cultural modes of thinking, such as polarization, stereotypes and bias, that underlie these actions. Finally, we will analyze the role of culture, and metaphors in particular, both as a political tool as well as a potential for social change.
About the speaker(s)
Pablo Valdivia is Full Professor and Chair of European Culture and Literature at the University of Groningen, Academic Director of the Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies (OSL), and Expert Scientific Advisor of the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences and Humanities and the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (NIAS-KNAW). His research deals primarily with the "Humanities" and "Technology", and the notions of "Culture, Literature and Crisis" from an interdisciplinary transnational perspective.
Judith Jansma, MA
Judith Jansma is a university lecturer and a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Arts. She is the Chair of the Programme Committee European Languages and Cultures, and a member of the Advisory Board of OSL (Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies).
James Leigh, MA
James Leigh is a university lecturer and a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Arts. His expertise lies in history and politics, culture, memory, identity, and heritage, and Central and Eastern Europe, especially Western Balkans/the former Yugoslavia.
This lecture is presented in association with the Harvard John A. Paulson School Of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
| Last modified: | 28 April 2020 7.27 p.m. |