91³ΙΘΛ

For Conn, COVID-19 is now part of the curriculum

The New London newspaper features two 91³ΙΘΛ English professors in an  published today about colleges incorporating the pandemic into their classes.

In a Media Rhetoric and Communication course, Associate Professor of English Jeff Strabone is discussing the misinformation surrounding the coronavirus that is being disseminated in certain media outlets.

β€œCOVID-19 is an epidemic, but it’s also a media event, so we need to think critically about the media that accompanies the epidemic,” Strabone told The Day, adding, β€œMisinformation can kill you.”

Professor of English and MacCurdy Professor of American Studies Julie Rivkin is incorporating COVID-19 into her course on narrative medicine, an interdisciplinary field centered on patients voicing their experiences, thus improving health care services.

According to The Day, students were asked to write about how their sense of time has been altered by the pandemic, and another assignment was to respond to poetry that New York Times readers had written in response to the article  in which a Boston emergency room doctor wrote a poem about the coronavirus crisis.

β€œThe students have been wonderfully responsive, and I think they make it clear this work is helping them,” Rivkin told The Day. β€œIt's kind of a space for them to make sense of what they're going through.”