Dr. Eli Shupe, the author of “Reading the Pandemic,” is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Humanities and is the co-director of the Medical Humanities Program at UTA. In Fall 2021, she will be teaching Healthcare Through Fiction (HUMA 3340) and Biomedical Ethics (PHIL 3319). “As Co-Director of the Medical Humanities program here at UTA, I am extraordinarily proud of our students. This first issue of Stimulus is a product of their passion and hard work, and I am honored to contribute an article to it. The arts have tremendous power to enrich our lives and deepen our understanding of the world around us. I hope that my article helps to bring out the ways in which literature can help us to understand—or at least to endure— this particular moment in the history of our species.”