Outbreak Narratives and Medical Humanities: A Transdisciplinary Comparative Approach to the Literary Representation of Ebola in Preston’s The Hot Zone (1994) and Tag Elsir’s Ebola 76 (2012)

نوع المستند : المقالة الأصلية

المؤلف

قسم اللغة الإنجليزية ، کلية الآداب ، جامعة الفيوم ، محافظة الفيوم

المستخلص

Humanity has been ravaged by a number of disastrous epidemics/pandemics that have exposed the cultural, social, political and hygienic fabric of societies. 'Outbreak Narrative' is a term coined by Priscilla Wald to describe a certain type of plot that manipulates the emergence of a latent viral disease that spreads world-wide and becomes a pandemic. The present research analyzes Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone and Amir Tag Elsir’s Ebola 76 through a transdisciplinary comparative approach. Choosing Preston’s The Hot Zone  (1994) and Tag Elsir’s Ebola 76 (2012) in particular is due to the fact that both texts handle the same epidemic/pandemic, Ebola, so that exploring the two texts illuminates the contributing factors in the eruption and containment of the epidemic as well as how fiction is instrumental in penetrating the realities of epidemic/pandemic disasters. The transdisiplinary approach is chosen because of the complex nature of epidemics/pandemics. The theoretical framework utilizes concepts from literature, anthropology, epidemiology and Medical Humanities. Such theoretical framework probes the interconnectedness and multi-dimensionality of the epidemic/pandemic crisis. The Hot Zone and Ebola 76 reveal two disparate perspectives of Ebola that undermine cultural differences and the role of literature in penetrating the realities of viruses.

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