Being Human during COVID

Released in 2021 during the second wave, Being Human during COVID underscores the urgency of addressing societal issues exacerbated by the pandemic. Editor Kristin Ann Hass organizes the collection into six themes—“Naming,” “Waiting,” “Grieving,” “More Waiting/Sheltering,” “Resisting,” and “Not Waiting” (Hass et al., 3)—which track the evolving pandemic experience through the lens of Humanities scholars with a time-stamped focus on the first wave of the pandemic. 

For instance, in “Facing Our Pandemic,” literary scholar Sara Blair highlights the significance of portraiture as a response to COVID-19, urging readers to see the hidden faces behind personal protective equipment and masks. Visual artist Jim Cogswell’s “COVID Diary: Hands, Nets, and Other Devices” captures the theme of waiting through evocative images of floating hands and fragments resembling the virus and bullet holes. Amal Fadlalla’s “Social Distances in Between: Excerpts from My COVID-19 Diaries” contrasts her lockdown experience in the Midwest with her sisters’ experiences in Saudi Arabia and Sudan, reflecting on how race and location shaped their respective realities. Roland Hwang’s “COVID-19 through an Asian American Lens” discusses the dual struggle faced by Asian Americans, confronted both with the pandemic and a surge in anti-Asian hate, stoked by President Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric. Finally, Henriksen and Neubacher’s “Unmuting Voices in a Pandemic” examines linguistic profiling, stressing the importance of addressing prejudice in audio-based communication platforms that became central during the crisis.

The book’s foregrounding of the “human” dimensions during the first wave of COVID-19 resonates with the Telling COVID-19 Stories project, which similarly amplifies stories of diverse lived experiences—including marginalized voices and narratives shaped by the pandemic’s intersectional impacts—but across all waves of the pandemic.