EP #410 - 2.8.2022 - The Viral Modernism and the 1918 Influenza w/Elizabeth Outka

Today I welcome Elizabeth Outka, author of Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature.

Elizabeth Outka is Professor of English at the University of Richmond. Her latest book, Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature (Columbia University Press 2020), investigates how one of the deadliest plagues in history—the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic—silently reshaped the modernist era, infusing everything from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, to the emergence of viral zombies, to the popularity of séances. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

She has written on topics ranging from consumer culture, to postcolonial representations of trauma, to disability studies. Her first book was Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism, and the Commodified Authentic (Oxford University Press 2009; 2012). Her essays have appeared in Modernism/modernity, NOVEL, Contemporary Literature, The Paris Review Daily and many edited collections.