Literature and the Culture of Viral Panic

What do Philip Roth’s polio novel Nemesis and Justin Cronin’s vampire novel The Passage, both published in 2010, have in common?  Quite a bit, actually.  Roth’s novel renders the atmosphere of fear surrounding a polio outbreak in Newark, New Jersey in the summer of 1944.  The protagonist is a young playground director futilely trying to [...]

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Our Obsession With Teens and Technology

The New York Times recently published an article on teenagers who have decided to reduce or eliminate the time they spend on Facebook in order to bolster their grades, their offline social lives, and their self-esteem (“To Deal With Obsession, Some Defriend Facebook,” December 21, 2009, A16).  I found the article especially interesting for the [...]

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No Time for the Flu

When I was a kid and I got the flu it meant days home in bed.  I’ll try not to glamorize this, but I do recall some fairly blissful mornings with a pile of Kleenex, cough drops (remember Ludens—they used to taste just like candy!), and the TV all to myself.  I’m sure this wasn’t [...]

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Post-Cold War Kids

November 9th marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a momentous event that signified the end of the Cold War.  I was a sophomore in college when the wall fell.  Today’s sophomores in college were not yet born.  I sometimes forget that a whole generation has now grown up in the [...]

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Born to Buy, but Not Born Yesterday

One of the laments we often hear about the state of childhood in America today is that childhood has become commercialized.  Our news media and bookstore bookshelves regularly feature stories about how American children are barraged by advertising and marketing: the average child views 40,000 television commercials a year, children as young as three can [...]

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