Epidemics and Othering: The Biopolitics of Covid-19 in Historical and Cultural Perspectives

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of many people around the globe and has brought to the fore discussions about the ways in which relations of power have shaped human biology and the health of populations. Focusing on these biopolitics, this collection brings together a number of historical and cultural perspectives on processes of othering in the long transnational human history of epidemics and pandemics. Contributors explore the intertwinement of biopolitics and othering with regard to specific bodies, people, and places, in relation to COVID-19 and beyond, as they discuss othering dynamics in the context of post/colonialism and with reference to a number of different cultural, political, medical and media discourses.

Heike Steinhoff is a junior professor of American studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Her research focuses on popular American (media) culture from the 19th to the 21st century, gender studies, body studies, and urban space. She has worked and published on literary discourses of urban sexuality in 19th century America, pirates in Hollywood cinema, gender in children’s movies, filmic representations of metropolitan masculinities, and the interrelations of body positivity, self-help literature and popular feminism.