Body & Mind Archives - Page 9 of 16

Public Health

Understanding the Fear of Vaccines

How to talk about public health in the age of COVID

July 21, 2020 • by Tarun Jose Kattumana

The pandemic has already changed some minds. Many who were previously opposed to vaccinations have softened their stance. However, misinformation from anti-vax groups continues to be far-reaching and influential. Why are anti-vax claims influential despite the immediate threat of the pandemic? What, if anything, can be done to lower the ...

Democracy

Should Governments Have Access to Our Data?

Privacy and democracy in the age of pandemics

July 20, 2020 • by Jo Guldi and Macabe Keliher

Americans are scared about encroachments on their data privacy, and rightly so. Prior to 9/11, most advocated limiting the government’s ability to gather and access data in the name of civil liberties. Faced with the threat of terror, however, citizens resigned themselves to encroachments on privacy made in the name ...

Should Governments Have Access to Our Data?

History

Time Is Out of Joint

Simultaneity in the epoch of the near and far

July 16, 2020 • by Sergio Infante

For those who are either unemployed or overworked, those whose habits and routines have fallen apart, those experiencing psychological or bodily distress, the days may seem to drag on endlessly. For others -- perhaps those who find themselves on the pandemic’s frontlines or those who have discovered a sense of ...

Feminism

Wages Against Essential Work

Our undervaluation of traditionally female work is coming home to roost

July 9, 2020 • by Alissa G. Karl

The streets around Highland Hospital, a few blocks from my house in Rochester, New York, are lined with signage “thanking” and “supporting” the “essential” workers who labor there. Many signs are hand-made, propped on porches or taped to light poles; others are mass-produced, like campaign signs, anchored into residential lawns. ...

History

According to Nathaniel Hawthorne, We Should All Be Wearing Face Masks

July 1, 2020 • by Russ Castronovo

According to the nineteenth-century novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, we should all be wearing face masks. In the current moment where politics meets pandemic, the decision about whether or not to wear a face mask is a lightning rod for debates over governmental overreach and freedom of expression—and according to some, a smug ...

According to Nathaniel Hawthorne, We Should All Be Wearing Face Masks

Psyche

In Search of Lost Time—And Misplaced Memories

June 24, 2020 • by Sergio Infante

You are in your twenties but have lived with petit mal epilepsy your entire life. Dr. Penfield has promised you a solution: he will peel back your scalp, open up your cranium, and probe your brain with electrodes for signs of injury. He believes that your epilepsy is due to ...

In Search of Lost Time—And Misplaced Memories

Activism

Social Justice Is More Important Than Social Distance

Why a researcher who understands the health consequences of mass gatherings is in the streets fighting racism

June 19, 2020 • by Miranda Yaver

My first political memory was watching officers of the Los Angeles Police Department beating Rodney King on television. I did not fully comprehend what I was watching at 5 years old, though I sensed that it was unjust. Nearly three decades later, braving coronavirus and angry about police brutality against people ...

Social Justice Is More Important Than Social Distance

Prisons and Police

Behind Bars in the Age of Coronavirus

A letter from prison

June 18, 2020 • by Phyllis Dietrichson

Is it wise or exploitative? My “soap shop” job is part of a difficult matrix of concepts. On the one hand, I am grateful to have the opportunity to work and contribute to the cause. On the other, I feel expendable and like a slave. But then again, I once ...

Psyche

Fear of Death Amid a Pandemic

Divergent psychoanalytic approaches

June 11, 2020 • by Howard Steele

Throughout the modern period, philosophers and psychologists have debated whether anxiety and fear are fundamental human feelings. For those treating patients using psychoanalytic methods, I have long pondered two divergent psychoanalytic approaches to two specific kinds of fear: (1) the fear of annihilation and (2) the fear of loss of ...

History

Taking Children

An excerpt from Taking Children: A History of American Terror by Laura Briggs

June 8, 2020 • by Laura Briggs

The past stalks the present, the ghost in the machine of memory. This is why history writing matters; it gives us ways to understand the specters already among us and to assemble tools to transform our situation. Things change; the epidemic of child taking in the context of mass incarceration ...

Kinships

The Bookkeeper

The racist legacy of a mixed-race family

June 5, 2020 • by Julia McKenzie Munemo

In The Book Keeper, the journey of finally reading those pulpy paperbacks set during slavery entwines with questions about Munemo’s father’s mental illness, the tale of her own love story, and her exploration of the fears she carries for her sons in a country where, as we continue to be ...

Democracy

Troilus and Cressida and a Diseased Body Politic

Reading Shakespeare in a time of plague

May 28, 2020 • by Emily Pitts Donahoe

We are perennially curious about what Shakespeare can teach us about our own world, hoping to find instruction and solace in his plays, poems, and exemplary turns of phrase. Recently, this curiosity has produced a score of tweets and articles speculating about Shakespeare’s productivity during periods when the plague ravaged London, ...