The May issue of The Revealer, published online by New York University, features a perspective essay written by one of our Ph.D candidates, Dale Spicer. “Sacrificing Healthcare Workers: War, Rhetoric and the Coronavirus Pandemic” points out how national discussions of healthcare draw on military metaphors to understand the work healthcare workers are undertaking during the pandemic. Religious studies can help us understand this rhetoric, because as Dale writes: “demanding that healthcare workers embody an ideal form of courage, determination, and self-sacrifice reduces the complicated choices healthcare workers face to a simple story of suffering, sacrifice, and national salvation.”
The College of Arts