Pandemic literature

Suffering, grief and death are inescapable components of human experience. Confronting such hardship, poet Vincent Casaregola says, can be a way to embrace life and find meaning.

Bubonic plague. Influenza. The Red Death. An infection of zombies. For humanities scholar Marie Lathers, reading fiction about these and other pandemics has proved to be a surprisingly comforting experience over the past year. And now, she's leading a group of Missouri S&T students on a similar journey.