DIS-FEAR: Hacia una práctica de aprendizaje-servicio en el Grado de Estudios Ingleses

Andrea Llano Busta (University of Oviedo) has compiled the recommendations submitted by project members. The resulting Corpus of visual and written texts that represent collective discourses of fear can now be accessed by clicking on the previous hyperlink. Students and teachers alike may benefit from this teaching resource in secondary and tertiary education, as well as from last year’s corpus , which is also available in this blog. If you would like to contribute to the update of the corpus for upcoming projects, you can send your suggestions to llanoandrea@uniovi.es. They will be registered and considered for future actions.

In this talk, Ana de las Heras (Spanish Foundation of Rheumatology) addresses the relation of rumours, trust and COVID-19 vaccines. As she exemplifies through the widespread opposition to the Nigerian polio immunization campaign in 2003, the anti-vax movement has existed for a long time precisely because vaccines cannot escape the context of their development, which encompasses the political and religious spheres. In this line, she recommends both Adam Kucharski’s The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread—and Why they Stop (2020) for its warning against the contagiousness of historical oblivion and Laura Spinney’s Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World (2017), which serves a similar purpose by reviving the twentieth-century pandemic. The goal is to encourage action in the face of misinformation.   A. de las Heras | COVID-19 Infodemic

Ana de las Heras (Spanish Foundation of Rheumatology) draws on her academic background as a biologist and journalist to share a privileged view on mental health. From the lens of epidemiology, which intermingles body, mind and feelings, her talk breaks down the taboos surrounding supposedly invisible illnesses such as depression, illustrated in the work of internationally renowned authors. For instance, Kate Millett recounts her personal experience as a patient in The Loony-Bin Trip (1990), whereas Virginia Woolf’s On Being Ill (1926) tackles the vulnerability associated to disease. Both writers risked being branded as insane for their poignant portrayals of mental health in a patriarchal society.   A. de las Heras | Mental Health

Regiane Ramos (Mato Grosso do Sul State University) shares a list of references that may be used in the study of transgender identities with a special emphasis on India. Here is her well-chosen selection: Dutta, Aniruddha, and Raina Roy. 2014. “Decolonizing Transgender in India: Some Reflections.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1, no. 3: 320–337. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-2685615. Hinchy, Jessica. 2019. Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, c.1850–1900 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108592208 . Narrain, Arvind, and Gautam Bhan, eds. 2005. Because I Have a Voice: Queer Politics in India . New Delhi: Yoda Press. Pattanaik, Devdutt. 2014. Shikhandi and Other Tales They Don’t Tell You . New Delhi: Zubaan/Penguin Books. Reddy, Gayatri. 2005. With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Semmalar, Gee Imaan. 2014. “Unpacking Solidarities of the Oppressed: Note

Rocío Riestra Camacho (University of Oviedo) introduces anorexia and the transformative power of literature to remove the stigma attached to the condition. To prove her points, she draws on a selection of films, novels and memoirs that represent stories of recovery and may be used to counter fear. The bibliotherapeutic approach chosen bridges the gap between the humanities and the sciences. Below is her own contextualization—in Spanish—to the talk. R. Riestra Camacho | Anorexia Recovery Memoirs as a Challenge to the Medical Discourse of Fear Las narrativas en la literatura y el cine sobre la anorexia se han centrado en la representación de la cara más negativa de esta enfermedad. En concreto, en su mayoría se han limitado a mostrar las etapas de aparición y desarrollo de la condición, a expensas de la representación de las fases de recuperación. Este tipo de narrativas refuerzan el discurso médico que presenta la anorexia como una enfermedad de limitado tratamiento. Aunque es cierto qu