Exploring Health Humanities in Selected Digital Short Plays about Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The pandemic has influenced the literary world, resulting in a new genre that combines stream-of-consciousness, scientific fiction, existentialism, dystopia, and speculative fiction. This genre is called pandemic literature and has been formed by the intersection of pandemic literature, health humanities, and digital literature. The research in this field examines the literary portrayal of global health crises and psychological trauma in selected plays written during the COVID-19 pandemic. Trauma and existential philosophy have been used to evaluate the select works with emphasis on resilience. The focus is on the shared human experience of trauma, shock, degeneration, decay, isolation, fear, death, and fear of death across the globe while critiquing the social and political responses to the rapid spread of the pandemic. The paper evaluates the effectiveness of literature as a means of bringing about tangible change in society using an interdisciplinary approach to capture the cultural memory and history of the period. The psychological implications of the plays on readers are also examined. Health humanities are applied to the selected works to evaluate their effectiveness in promoting health, health support, and wellbeing. The study concludes that the pandemic literature includes the sociocultural history of the time with psychological insights into coping with healthcare emergencies reflecting the spread of the pandemic and defence mechanisms developed by people and states. The COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread terror and mental trauma across the globe. However, by portraying universal experiences of trauma, the texts strived to promote sustainable general health and wellbeing globally.