Waiting with Godot?: Pandemic Endings in Perspective
Thu, Apr 22
|Online Public Event
This seminar moves from historical and legal perspectives on endings to set the framework for a discussion on the implications of the current pandemic as it winds down.
Time & Location
Apr 22, 2021, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM EDT
Online Public Event
About the Event
The seminar will use the historical context to address events and conditions that may influence the way in which COVID-[20]19 both concludes and lingers in 2021-2022 and beyond. “No matter how eloquently historical ‘endings’ are proclaimed and how sympathetically we may listen, what seems most striking is the inability to connect these endings to any pattern of meaning,” wrote Paul Corcoran in “Historical Endings: Waiting with Godot,” published in 1989 as the Cold War was beginning to end. On the cultural front, in the midst of 2020, a Scottish rock band, made famous by their first single, “Instant History,” released the album, A Celebration of Endings. What are the implications of endings that are framed as “instant” and how do events linger?
Mary Dudziak, Griggs Candler Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law, author of War Time and Cold War Civil Rights, will open with her reflections on COVID in the context of her work…