Event
Choice in the Time of a Pandemic
Hosted by the Wolf Humanities Center.
Response by David L. Eng, Richard L. Fisher Professor of English.
Should people be free to choose to wear masks? How are hospitals deciding whom to put on a ventilator and whom not? And why are some people choosing to get infected? Acclaimed philosopher and sociologist Renata Salecl examines freedom of choice in the current pandemic and asks why choice is often anxiety provoking, how it relates to jealousy and envy, and how it can lead to aggression in times of social crisis.
The Wolf Humanities Center is Penn’s main hub for interdisciplinary humanities research and public programming. Established in 2017 by a gift from Noelle and Dick Wolf, the center grew out of the Penn Humanities Forum, founded by Wendy Steiner in 1999. Our goals are to demonstrate how vital the humanities are to the life of the mind and the health of society, and how fundamentally connected they are with many areas of urgent inquiry in medicine, law, business, and the sciences.