Episode 3 - Outbreak: A Two Cultures Pinch-Point

LitSciPod: The Literature and Science Podcast

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric). Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.

Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Emilie Taylor-Pirie (@DrETaylorPirie, née Taylor-Brown), an Early Career Academic specialising in the intersections between literature, science and culture. Millie discusses nineteenth-century responses to malaria and how scientists couched their work in imaginative language; how studying a joint honours in English Literature and Biology set her up for an interdisciplinary career; the importance of being prepared for a zombie apocalypse; and much more! At the end of the episode, you can hear Millie read an extract from Henry Seton Merriman’s imperial romance novel With Edged Tools (1894): ‘The Accursed Camp’

Introduction:

• Kari Nixon, ‘The way we talk about coronavirus matters’, 3 March 2020, CNN.com
• Alice Bennett (@AlicePonderland), ‘A lot of people …’, Twitter, 20 March 2020
• Adrian Bott (@Cavalorn), ‘For those who didn't know …’, Twitter, 20 March 2020
• Susannah Walker (@QuadRoyal), ‘Full evisceration here: …’ Twitter, 20 Mar 2020
• Bex Lewis, Keep Calm and Carry On: The Truth Behind the Poster (2017)
• Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain 1939–1945 (1992)
• Museum of Healthcare at Kingston (Ontario), ‘Midwifery basin,’ From the Collection
• Amy Davidson Sorkin, ‘The Fever Room: Epidemics and Social Distancing in Bleak House and Jane Eyre’, New Yorker, 20 March 2020
• Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1853)
• ‘Typhus Epidemic’, Evening News (17th Dec 1896), p. 3, Welsh Newspapers Online

Interview:

• Emilie Taylor-Brown, ‘(Re)Constructing the Knights of Science: Parasitologists and their Literary Imaginations’, Journal of Literature and Science 7.2 (2014) pp.62-79
• M. Easter-Ross, ‘Biblical Physics’, John O'Groat Journal, 30 December 1842, p.4
• Sydney Whiting, Memoirs of a Stomach (1853)
• F. P. Maynard, ‘Notes on the Examination of Malarial Blood’, Indian Medical Gazette 30.11 (1895) pp.412-20 (p.420)
• Ronald Ross, ‘Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Cervantes', Science Progress, 11.41 (1916), pp.137-40 (p.137)
• Emilie Taylor-Brown, ‘Death, Disease, and Discontent: The Monstrous Reign of the Supervirus’, in Unnatural Reproductions and Monstrosity: the Birth of the Monster in Literature, Media, and Film eds. Andrea Wood and Brandy Schillace (2014) pp.133-158
• Emilie Taylor-Pirie, 'The Art and Science of COVID-19', 16 March 2020, LinkedIn
• Center for Preparedness and Response, 'Zombie Preparedness', (page last reviewed Oct 2018), CDC
• https://washyourlyrics.com