An Ibero-American Perspective on Narratives of Pandemics is a critique of the realities of the pandemic in the Ibero-American world and its intertwined relationship with the environment. Through a critical gaze into the history of the region as it has evolved through periods of socio-environmental and cultural conflicts, the book chronicles multiple experiences of how people managed to negotiate multiple crises on a daily basis by often clinging to their age old cultural and healing practices, as well as the humanistic representation of such experiences in various fictional and nonfictional writings. The contributors expose the biopolitics around COVID-19 and its effects particularly on marginalised populations and the environment in an effort to consider the complexity of the pandemic in its multiple dimensions. They evaluate it through climatic, socioeconomic, political, scientific, and cultural lenses that they argue shaped the realities of the pandemic. They also take a close look at the use and effects of language in virtual spaces, implying it has the ability to construct/mis-construct reality in this postmodern world, arguing there is a need for a new environmental ethic post-pandemic.
Zelia M. Bora has a PhD in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from Brown University and serves as general editor of Revista Interdisciplinar de Literatura e Ecocritica. Animesh Roy is assistant professor in the Department of English at St. Xavier's College in Jharkhand, India. Ricardo Ballesteros de la Fuente is professor of Spanish literature at the University of Valladolid in Spain.
Preface, by Zelia M. Bora, Animesh Roy, and Ricardo Ballesteros de la Fuente Introduction: Narratives of Pandemics: Literature and Culture-An Iberoamerican Perspective, by Zelia M. Bora, Animesh Roy, and Ricardo Ballesteros de la Fuente Part I Chapter 1. Tuberculosis and Melancholy in the Work of Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, by Juan Pascual Gay and Mercedes Pascual Zavala Chapter 2. The Turn of the Century and the Spanish Imaginary Facing the Disease: The Case of Ganivet, by Ricardo Ballesteros de la Fuente and Juan R. Coca Chapter 3. The Language of a Sick Nation: Epidemics and Environmental Destruction in the Narratives of Lima Barreto, by Zelia M. Bora Part II Chapter 4. Guatemalan Expressions: Memorials and Private Reflective Spaces during the Internal Conflict and Covid-19 Pandemic, by Martha C. Galvan-Mandujano Chapter 5. Between Life and Death: Practices of Healing of the Ecuadorian Siona Nationality as a Political Spirituality, by Maria Fernanda Solorzano Granada Chapter 6. Now That We Are Back to School...Pandemic, Environment, and Community Links, by Norma Georgina Gutierrez Serrano Chapter 7. Chronicle of Life during Covid-19 Pandemic in Mexico, by Georgina Vega Fregoso Chapter 8. Afro-Brazilians and Covid-19: Revisiting the Concepts Necropolitics and Genocide, by Siddharth Monteiro Bora and Evely Libanori Chapter 9. Language and Pandemics: Uses and Effects of Whatsapp-Students and Teacher under Isolation, by Juarez Nogueira Lins Chapter 10. The Covid-19 Pandemic and Agency for a New Environmental Ethic, by Maria Geralda de Miranda and Bruno Matos de Farias Chapter 11. Biopolitics and Environmental Governance in Time of the New Coronavirus Pandemic, by Marcus Alexandre Cavalcanti and Katia Eilane Santos Avelar
