Reflections on the Pandemic

COVID and Social Crises in the Year Everything Changed

Teresa Politano

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9781978831094
  9781978831100
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978831117
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Higher Education
• Index: Literature

Reflections on the Pandemic: COVID and Social Crises in the Year Everything Changed is a collection of essays, poems, and artwork that captures the raw energy and emotion of 2020 from the perspective of the Rutgers University community. The project features work from a diverse group of Rutgers scholars, students, staff, and alumni. Reflecting on 2020 from a number of perspectives – mortality, justice, freedom, equality, democracy, family, health, love, hate, economics, history, medicine, science, social justice, the environment, art, food, sanity – the book features contributions by Evie Shockley, Joyce Carol Oates, Naomi Jackson, Ulla Berg, Grace Lynne Haynes, Jordan Casteel, and President Jonathan Holloway, among others. This book, through its rich and imaginative storytelling at the intersection of scholarly expertise and personal narrative, brings readers into the hearts and minds of not just the Rutgers community but the world.

Contributors include: Patricia Akhimie, Marc Aronson, Ulla D. Berg, Stephanie Bonne, Stephanie Boyer, Kimberly Camp, Jordan Casteel, Kelly-Jane Cotter, Mark Doty, David Dreyfus, Adrienne E. Eaton, Katherine C. Epstein, Leah Falk, Paul G. Falkowski, Rigoberto González, James Goodman, David Greenberg, Angelique Haugerud, Grace Lynne Haynes, Leslieann Hobayan, Jonathan Holloway, James W. Hughes, Naomi Jackson, Amy Jordan, Vikki Katz, Mackenzie Kean, Robert E. Kopp, Christian Lighty, Stephen Masaryk, Louis P. Masur, Revathi V. Machan, Yalidy Matos, Belinda McKeon, Susan L. Miller, Yehoshua November, Joyce Carol Oates, Mary E. O'Dowd, Katherine Ognyanova, David Orr,  Gregory Pardlo, Steve Pikiell, Teresa Politano, en Purkert, Nick Romanenko, Evie Shockley, Caridad Svich, and Didier William?.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Reflections in a COVID Photograph
• pantoum: 2020
• Mercy (As If)
• Writing My Last Book
• Taking the Court
• The New Normal
• Emerging Not Stronger or Weaker but Different
• Looking for a Better End Game
• Pandemic Dispatches (East Africa–North America)
• War of the World: How Humans Became a Destructive Force of Nature
• Jared (2020)
• Reflections on Being Human in the Twenty-First Century
• Risking Delight in the Middle of a Pandemic
• Days of 2020: Fear without Knowledge
• A Litany for Survival
• Sojourner Truth, Founding Mother
• A Letter to Juneteenth on the Embodied History of Life in 2020
• We Cannot Escape History
• Paying Attention
• A Reckoning with Names: Signs, Symbols, and the Meanings of History
• The COVID States Project: Empowering a National Response
• I’ve Missed You (2021)
• Burning Bologna, 2021
• Pandemic Theology: “Bliss and Grief”
• Kid’s Cloth Face Mask from Cat & Jack^TM
• Call the Midwife
• Slap Roti and the Story of New York City
• From The Journal of a Therapy Cat
• Black and Gray
• Playing with Anxiety
• Virtual Class #219, March 2021, 2:50 p.m.–4:10 p.m.
• It’s Harder for Extroverts
• The Old Has Passed Away, Behold, The New Has Come (2 Corinthians 5:17)
• Rutgers Spit Test
• Connectivity, Connection, and Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic
• The Faculty Parent: Juggling Parenting, Teaching, Research, and Writing in Uncertain Times
• Resiliency, Resourcefulness, Responsibility, and Reinvention
• COVID-19 and Spaces of Confinement
• STOP! (2021)
• The Climate Crisis and the University
• 2020: A New Jersey Economy Reinvented
• Work in the Pandemic and Beyond
• The Tolling Bell
• Stagecoach Mary
• On Racism in Museums
• STYLE Bird
• Meet Me at the Theater at the End of the World: Thirteen Illuminations and an Afterglow
• What Kind of Pain
• Be Still
• Sorrow
• The Only Replacement
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Notes on Contributors
• Text Permissions