Special Issue: Science, Technology, and Literature during Plague and Pandemics

1 Without long-term university-based research, our current ability to fight the virus with vaccines may not have occurred within such a short time period.2 As Basken’s article makes clear, university departments and researchers often face numerous roadblocks to having their work recognized: funding, name recognition, professional status, and even political or ideological barriers. According to Basken, the fact that Karikó’s role in mRNA was glossed over by Penn illustrates the obstacles that often accompany academic research. Basken writes, “the degree that Penn and others allow [these issues] to come out raises the prospect for academic research of high-profile pressure in key areas of long-standing concern,” which include “the federal funding of basic science, the academies treatment of the lesser privileged, and the structural biases inside governmental and journal peer review practices.” [...]we sought submissions that examined intersections between literature, science, art, and technology, making manifest the journal’s mission to encourage cross-disciplinary conversations.