Marquette University Intimations Project

In Spring 2021, Dr. Gerry Canavan’s “Literature of the 21st Century” class and Dr. Leah Flack’s “British Literature Since 1900” courses in the English department at Marquette University collaborated on the “Marquette University Intimations Project.” Both courses read Zadie Smith’s Intimations — her loose memoir in six essays of the COVID-19 period, running roughly from the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 to the midsummer Black Lives Matter uprisings in various cities around the U.S. — and then both courses had students produce mini-essays inspired in some fashion by Intimations, detailing in some way or another some component of their own personal COVID era. Some students reflected on the immediate outbreak, including (in some cases) emergency travel back from student abroad; others reflected on the way the pandemic made the precarity and fragility of our lives inescapable, whether through their own illnesses or the illnesses of loved ones; still others reflected on the boredom of COVID, or its potential for personal transformation, and more.

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