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Being Human during COVID
Kristin Ann Hass, Editor
Open Access
Science has taken center stage during the COVID-19 crisis; scientists named and diagnosed the virus, traced its spread, and worked together to create a vaccine in record time. But while science made the headlines, the arts and humanities were critical in people's daily lives. As the world went into lockdown, literature, music, and media became crucial means of connection, and historians reminded us of the resonance of the past as many of us heard for the first time about the 1918 influenza pandemic. As the twindemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice tore through the United States, a contested presidential race unfolded, which one candidate described as "a battle for the soul of the nation."
Being Human during COVID documents the first year of the pandemic in real time, bringing together humanities scholars from the University of Michigan to address what it feels like to be human during the COVID-19 crisis. Over the course of the pandemic, the questions that occupy the humanities—about grieving and publics, the social contract and individual rights, racial formation and xenophobia, ideas of home and conceptions of gender, narrative and representations and power—have become shared life-or-death questions about how human societies work and how culture determines our collective fate. The contributors in this collection draw on scholarly expertise and lived experience to try to make sense of the unfamiliar present in works that range from traditional scholarly essays, to personal essays, to visual art projects. The resulting book is shot through with fear, dread, frustration, and prejudice, and, on a few occasions, with a thrilling sense of hope.
Being Human during COVID documents the first year of the pandemic in real time, bringing together humanities scholars from the University of Michigan to address what it feels like to be human during the COVID-19 crisis. Over the course of the pandemic, the questions that occupy the humanities—about grieving and publics, the social contract and individual rights, racial formation and xenophobia, ideas of home and conceptions of gender, narrative and representations and power—have become shared life-or-death questions about how human societies work and how culture determines our collective fate. The contributors in this collection draw on scholarly expertise and lived experience to try to make sense of the unfamiliar present in works that range from traditional scholarly essays, to personal essays, to visual art projects. The resulting book is shot through with fear, dread, frustration, and prejudice, and, on a few occasions, with a thrilling sense of hope.
We would like to recognize the generous support of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts and the Michigan Humanities Collaboratory for the Fulcrum edition of this volume.
Citable Link
Published: 2021
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
- 978-0-472-03878-7 (paper)
- 978-0-472-90250-7 (open access)
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- Facing our Pandemic16
- Living on Loss of Privileges: What We Learned in Prison3
- Not Even Past: Archiving 2020 in Real Time5
- COVID Diary: Hands, Nets, and Other Devices18
- Social Distances in Between: Excerpts from my COVID-19 Diaries8
- Grief and the Importance of Real Things during COVID-198
- Protests, Prayers, and Protections: Three Visitations During COVID4
- Soliloquous Solipsism: An Attempt to Put Words to a Loss of Words10
- Prosthetics for Right Now6
- Un-Muting Voices in a Pandemic: Linguistic Profiling in a Moment of Crisis2
- Acting Out: Performance and Political Mobilization in the Pandemic7