Lee Mordechai – författare

In 536 CE, several contemporaries reported an unusual atmospheric phenomenon in which sunlight appeared to dim for an extended period. Although the historical sources periodically portray such rare occurrences, this event has recently been declared by some scholars as the cause of "the worst year to be alive" and a turning point between antiquity and the medieval period, sparking widespread public and academic interest.In "The Worst Year to Be Alive", Lee Mordechai argues that scholarly research on the 536 event has been shaped by public discourse through three successive waves of attention: the mid-1980s, the mid-to-late 1990s, and from 2008 to the present. Each wave lasted longer and attracted more interest than the one before, and each was marked by a different dominant interpretation. The first wave interpreted the 536 event as a volcanic eruption and used it as a framework to discuss the threat of nuclear war-then a pressing concern for scientists. The second wave proposed that it resulted from the impact or near-impact of a celestial body such as a comet or meteor, reflecting popular anxieties of the 1990s. The third and current wave, informed by new scientific findings, has rejected the impact theory and instead reinterprets the event as an early case of climate change. This latest wave has reached top-tier academic venues and captured global media attention.By blending history, science, and media analysis, Mordechai traces the evolving narrative of the 536 event and reveals how our present concerns, like anthropogenic climate change, shape our understanding of the past. He presents academic research and public discourse as intertwined: public conversations steer scholarly agendas and interpretation, while academic work can end up reinforcing prevailing public narratives.

Discusses how the depiction of diseases in movies has changed over the last century and what these changes reveal about American cultureExamines disease movies as a genre that has emerged over the last century and includes pandemic and zombie filmsReveals the changes to the genre's narratives over three broad time periods: the beginning of film through the 1980s, the 1990s through the mid-2000s, and the late 2000s and afterwardInvestigates the evolution of disease movies through three perspectives: historically notable films, remakes, and franchisesAnalyses disease movies in the context of the development of American, global capitalism and the fragmentation of the social contractExplains the role of disease movie narratives in the American experience of CovidAmerican movies about infectious diseases have reflected and driven dominant cultural narratives during the past century. These movies both real pandemics and imagined zombie outbreaks have become wildly popular since the beginning of the 21st century.They have shifted from featuring a contained outbreak to an imagined containment of a known disease to a globalized, uncontainable pandemic of an unknown origin. Movie narratives have changed from identifying and solving social problems to a despair and acceptance of America's failure to fulfil its historic social contract.Movies reflect and drive developments in American capitalism that increasingly advocates for individuals and their families, rather than communities and the public good. Disease movies today minimize human differences and envisage a utopian new world order to advance the needs of contemporary American capitalism. These movie narratives shaped reactions to the outbreak of Covid and reinforced individual responsibility as the solution to end the pandemic.