Author: Bernhard Struck

Having read the interview with Frank Snowden in the New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-pandemics-change-history) I keep wondering: if something like Covid-19 or the Spanish flu 1918-19 affects millions of people in various ways (death, social life, family, unemployment, the economy, recession) why

Im finding it harder and harder to find something interesting to write about, or even speak about for that matter. As days start blending into weeks, I feel as though Im beginning to lack topics of conversation at the dinner

We’ve talked a lot over the course of the semester about the establishment and maintenance of transnational and global connections, but recently during my research for my project I have come across cases of the opposite: the rejection, dismissal and

I’ve been reading a fascinating book by the Italian-American author, Pietro di Donato. Its highly unusual language and foreign-sounding syntax, which seemed to blend multiple styles and registers into a composite narrative voice, intrigued me from the start. That, combined

This time spent in isolation has made me reflective. I’ve considered starting a podcast, writing a novel, embarking on a cooking journey that I meticulously document (if you are looking for some light evening entertainment, the Making Perfect series on

Reading the news this morning, I (unsurprisingly) found that almost every article on the home page was about the coronavirus pandemic, ranging from a governmental crackdown on fake news to its potential impact on university admissions to a limited though

This Spring Break has been unusual, to say the least. Like a lot of us I presume, I spent a large portion of my time heavily procrastinating and watching a lot of Netflix. A few days ago I came across

Following up on Isabel’s blog post title, I thought I’d provide my own Marquez novel title, equally relevant to the unprecedented levels of seclusion and social isolation experienced by many during this corona crisis. ‘100 years’ is blatantly hyperbolic, but

Excuse this week’s title, but it’s a phrase I’ve kept coming back to over the last week. I was in the short loan section of the library a couple weeks ago and saw a few people had put Love in

Like so many others, the inspiration for my blog post this week comes from social distancing. This has been a hectic week. In the space of a few days, face-to-face teaching has been suspended at Universities and schools around the

On the back of the purchase of Global Conceptual History: A Reader (thank you again, Bernhard), I thought it at least warranted a discussion in a blog post. In their introduction, Margrit Pernau & Dominic Sachsenmaier argue for the importance

On Saturday during the Unconference, a group of us had quite an interesting conversation regarding International Schools, and the social implications they have as well as the transnational net that they build. International Schools are usually private, English speaking schools

When Hitler blew his brains out in the ruins of Berlin, this was commonly thought to be the end of Nazism as an ideology. The far right would remain, of course. There had been reactionaries, even fascists, before Hitler. The

In the late nineteenth century, the size and number of poverty-stricken slums in American cities exploded at an alarming rate. These slums had grown out of both the country’s rapid transformation into an industrial power following the American Civil War

Coronavirus has shocked the increasingly interconnected global community to its core, perhaps even more so than the ebola epidemic five, the swine flu epidemic ten, or the bird flu epidemic fifteen years ago. While I consider a cynical approach to