Category Archives: Journal of a Plague Year

The Loyola English Department community’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Journal of a Plague Year: Wild Campus, by Priyanka Anne Jacob

“may my heart always be open to little birds/ who are the secret of living”-E.E. Cummings In late March 2020, the university sent students home, and, shortly after, the state of Illinois shut down almost everything, including the parks. When … Continue reading

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Journal of a Plague Year: Anna Rubenstein

The Ghost Ship fire happened a few years after I graduated from high school and moved away from San Francisco, having realized that, with the city being pressure-washed by capital the way that it was, living there was going to … Continue reading

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Journal of a Plague Year: Moby Dick in the Pandemic, by Margaret Hawkins

I read Moby Dick this summer, preparing to teach it this fall.  I was hungry for something consequential and thought my students might be, too. I craved content that was soulful, dense, dark. Longer than 280 characters. Chapter 42 (“The … Continue reading

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Journal of a Plague Year: Lydia Craig

Dear LUC Department of English Community, My actual COVID-19 journal has been a whirlwind of ups and downs, so it’s valuable to be able to summarize events in a smaller piece for the Journal of a Plague Year. Like many … Continue reading

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Journal of a Plague Year: Jack Cragwall

Welcome, everyone, to the English Department’s revitalized blog! Our teaching, our learning, and our living have never been so disrupted, and our hope is that this place can be a small place for sharing and connection, even as we’re all, as Mary Wollstonecraft would say, “immured in our families, groping in the dark.”

Our idea is that our whole community—students, faculty, staff—might help build this “Journal of a Plague Year”. Teaching from my dining room table this semester has shown me how much I took for granted, and how much I now miss, the casual conversations and connections with students and friends that were the texture of a regular day on campus.

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