#DossierCorona is a series that addresses matters in the social sciences and humanities that were on the agenda before the Covid-19 pandemic, matters that deserve new attention or a different perspective, issues that gain a new urgency in times of crisis. The matter is thus not the pandemic itself, but rather how the virus, its spread, and its effects disrupt the ways we look at those issues that will persist and that will determine the way people will live.
#DossierCorona #religiousmatters
The thread #religiousmatters takes up an initiative of the research project Religious Matters in an Entangled World at the University of Utrecht, directed by the anthropologist and religious studies scholar Birgit Meyer, who also is the chairperson of the Academic Advisory Board of the Forum Transregionale Studien and edits the thread #religiousmatters of the dossier. Contributions to #religiousmatters are published both on the Religious Matters blog and/or the TRAFO Blog. New contributions to the thread are welcome and should be from 700 to around 1.500 words.
#DossierCorona #workingfutures
The thread #workingfutures builds on the activities of the transnational research network „Working Futures“, founded in 2018 as a cooperation between the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and the International Research Center Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History (re:work). The contributions of the thread explore how the Corona crisis challenges the field and the future of work as well as related public and academic debates. Contributions to #workingfutures are published both as part of the series “Wiko Briefs – Working Futures in Corona Times” on the network’s website at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and on the TRAFO Blog.
#DossierCorona #transnationalfeminisms
The thread #transnationalfeminisms emerges from the online series “Transnational Feminist Dialogues in Times of Corona Crisis” organized by the Margherita von Brentano Center for Gender Studies at Freie Universität Berlin in cooperation with the MA Program Gender, Intersectionality and Politics at FU Berlin, Academy in Exile and Academics for Peace Germany. The contributions to the thread present issues that have been discussed and researched by gender studies scholars and feminist activists for some time, but gain a renewed urgency for the political and public sphere. The thread will build up 4 sub-topics: Care work, division of labour and changing health systems in times of crisis; Gender-based violence under lockdown; Migration, border regimes, migrant workers; Gender Studies, feminist politics and conservative backlash in times of corona. Through these subjects the thread wants to reflect on perspectives and challenges that the current situation brings along from a feminist and transnational point of view. New contributions are welcome and should be from around 700 to 1.500 words. For more information please contact sabina.garcia.peter@fu-berlin.de.
#DossierCorona #socialdistancingmatters
This thread critically considers the global effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on social relations, ranging from personal contacts to institutional and transnational configurations. The contributions come from the inaugural edition of CATSarena, published by the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies in Heidelberg, Germany.
#DossierCorona #covid19inasia
This thread highlights how the dimensions of the pandemic vary across the countries of Asia. To this scope, the contributors document a wide range range of local responses to COVID-19, from the subversion of health measures to the critique of governments.. The contributions to this thread come from the second edition of CATSarena, published by the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies in Heidelberg, Germany.
Single issues
#constitutionmatters | #dreamsmatter | #educationmatters | #musicmatters | #poetrymatters | #respatialization | #sciencefictionmatters | #solidaritymatters | #travelmatters
Contributions
#DossierCorona is conceived as an open and modular form of contributions from different disciplines and regions of the university and world. Suggestions for new threads, single matters and contributions to existing threads by scholars, artists and practitioners of any discipline on archival, aesthetical, environmental, historical and other matters or issues of law, society, migration and others are welcome. Contributions are around 1.000-1.500 words. Suggestions for new threads should include a brief abstract that includes the guiding questions. Furthermore, we invite you to include up to 3 images (royalty-free or public domain) that relate to the thread topic. Please send your proposals to Moritz Buchner, communication@trafo-berlin.de.
By Chunping Lin. The word “幽默 yōumò,” which means “humor” in Chinese, is originally from Jiǔzhāng 九章 of the Chu Lyrics 楚辭 Chǔcí (475 B.C.–221 B.C.) and was used to describe the tranquility of nature. Lin Yutang林語堂 (linguist, philosopher, and translator, 1895–1976) translated the English word “humor” with the word “幽默 yōumò”.
By Marina Rudyak. The seminar “Reporting Corona: State Media, Critical Journalism and Citizen Witnessing during the COVID-19 Outbreak in Wuhan” at the Institute of Chinese Studies at Heidelberg University, which I taught in the summer semester of 2021, explored the news and information production in locked-down Wuhan. It analysed the different types of reporting and writing, their motivations and their ways of coping with censorship.
By Gautam Liu. The COVID-19 pandemic in India generated a strange phenomenon in how health workers were perceived. On the one hand officials were not tired in proclaiming doctors and nurses as gods, on the other hand health workers were ostracized by large parts of the general population.
By Khadija Mohamed Embaby and Amira Mittermaier. In times of profound uncertainty, what does God offer to believers? And how does uncertainty affect believers’ ideas about, and relations to, God?
By Juan Miguel Leandro L. Quizon. Travel entails expectations, musings, and meanderings. The moment travelers make final confirmations of flight bookings, their minds begin to explore the countless possibilities of their new journey. However, this year reminded us how a pandemic can seize travel instantaneously.
By Rafique Wassan. Initiated in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, Café Saqafat is a new online social media broadcasting cultural work – mediated through FaceBook live streaming and later on a recorded version uploaded on YouTube.
By William S. Sax. Following the rapid spread of social distancing to slow the spread of the Corona virus, Hindu nationalists developed the thesis that the rest of the world was merely adopting practices developed thousands of years ago by “Hindu civilization.”
By Marina Rudyak, Maximilian Mayer and Marius Meinhof. “We need not be at this point.” Such was the verdict of virologist Isabella Eckerle commenting on the second lockdown in the German talk show “Hart aber fair (Tough but Fair).”
By Prem Poddar. As the uncertainty of the interregnum stretches and seems as pliable as a virus-stained concertina, I cannot go anytime soon to my cottage in the multikulti hills of the Himalayas on the Indian side. It is a fortune shared by a considerable number of folks stuck elsewhere and everywhere on this beleaguered planet.
By Barbara Mittler. No Handshakes, no Hugs and no Bises: The global call for social distancing has significantly changed rules and gestures of conduct and etiquette that had travelled the world for centuries. The handshake is one such example.
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research is a platform for scholars in the humanities and social sciences who are interested in transregional exchange and research on current issues. TRAFO is the blog of the Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin) and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland (Bonn).
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