Games can help players practice important skills related to civics and public life, like communication, empathy and compassion, critical thinking, and problem-solving.
As the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of a pandemic approaches, it might be time to consider how our modern age wants to remember this plague.
The iconography of the Pestsäule in Vienna indicates that the plague the city suffered was viewed as punishment for sin.
Noppasin Wongchum / iStock via Getty images
Although memorials to past pandemics are not as prolific as war memorials, they do exist. A scholar of visual culture provides a brief history of monuments around the world.
The English believed God communicated through plague – and viewed the epidemic which decimated Algonquian territory between 1616-19 as a sign.
John Eliot Preaching to the Indians, Gift of Martha J. Fleischman and Barbara G. Fleischman, 1999, The Met
As ready as you are to be done with COVID-19, it’s not going anywhere soon. A historian of disease describes how once a pathogen emerges, it’s usually here to stay.
Anthony Van Dyck's Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague-stricken of Palermo/The Conversation (with apologies)
The things we find hard to balance during COVID-19 – individual freedoms versus the group, accountability versus blame, science versus personal beliefs – are centuries old and deeply human.
A 19th-century engraving depicts the Angel of Death descending on Rome during the Antonine plague.
J.G. Levasseur/Wellcome Collection
Societies and cultures that seem ossified and entrenched can be completely upended by pandemics, which create openings for conquest, innovation and social change.
The 17th-century plague in Rome.
Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images
We’re supposed to suppress feelings of envy. But what if the kind spurred by school shutdowns, frontline work and cramped apartments are worth exploring – and acting upon?
Written between 1348 and 1353, the Decameron is a prescription for psychological survival, a way of mentally distancing from today’s death counts and grim economic forecasts.
People wear face masks as they pay for parking in Montréal, July 25, 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
The COVID-19 pandemic is not the first time people have been required to wear face masks for protection. Mask-wearing has a long history, and reflects society’s sense of shared responsibility.
Woodcut, circa 1400. A witch, a demon and a warlock fly toward a peasant woman.
Hulton Archive /Handout via Getty Images
The idea of organized satanic witchcraft was invented in 15th-century Europe by church and state authorities, who at first had a hard time convincing regular folks it was real.
Australia’s island identity and attitude to border security was forged from handling pandemics since the time of federation. Here’s what we’ve learned along the way.
A comet depicted in medieval times in the Bayeux tapestry.
Bayeux Museam
People have lived with infectious disease throughout the millennia, with culture and biology influencing each other. Archaeologists decode the stories told by bones and what accompanies them.