COVID-19

April 24, 2020 | STS Approaches to COVID-19: A Roundtable Discussion

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Friday, April 24, 2020

11:00am–12:30pm PST

A livestream conversation of STS approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic, moderated by Saul Halfon, Virginia Tech Department of Science, Technology, and Society.

This roundtable brings together scholars from a range of STS specializations (cultural studies, sociology, history, politics, policy, and anthropology) to help us think through the COVID-19 pandemic. Topics will range freely across cultures of expertise, institutional trust & distrust, big data and modeling, drug development and regulatory practice, health security politics, health disparities, pandemic preparedness, health and supply infrastructures, and more. This will be an informal exchange of scholars, and we invite you to join us.

This event was recorded and streamed live on the VT STS Facebook page.

Participants

Jenny Reardon (UCSC, Sociology and the Science & Justice Research Center)

Sabina Leonelli (University of Exeter, Philosophy and History of Science)

Rebecca Hester (Virginia Tech, STS)

Arthur Daemmrich (Smithsonian Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation)

asynchronous video appearance by Carlo Caduff (Kings College London, Global Health & Social Medicine)

Saul Halfon (Virginia Tech, STS) served as Moderator

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SJRC Response to COVID-19

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COVID-19: The Pandemicene

Due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, UC Santa Cruz, like many other higher education institutions, announced the suspension of in-person instruction, lectures and discussion sections through the full spring quarter, including all labs, studios, field research, and field study courses.

Now, with many communities ordered to stay-in-place, with only essential business allowed to operate, we find ourselves in the midst of a historic remaking of our entangled worlds. Science & Justice will be in real time working with our friends and colleagues around the world to make sense of and respond to this moment, the pandemicene.

How do we do science and justice remotely? Re-learn.

The SJRC has a robust network of local and international public health experts, scholars, and practitioners leading the way with collecting resources for teaching about COVID-19, writing open response letters, developing news items, and calls to action, and organizing and participating in online events.

Undergraduate Curriculum & Training

The SJRC will gather several undergraduate researchers to focus current Center research projects on the following emerging areas in the context of COVID-19:

  • Re-Worlding: Living and Learning Alone Together in the Pandemicene
  • Community, Civil Society and Social Justice Responses to COVID-19
  • Just Biomedicine in an Age of COVID-19:  How Can Researchers (Public Health, Genomics, Virologists, Bioethicists) Collaborate in New Ways?
  • The Challenges of Knowing and Responding in the Age of No Data and Mis-information
  • The Crisis of Public Health in Infrastructures of Care and Incarceration

Read more on these developing areas of concern in the campus news article, “Discrimination, governance, and trust in the age of COVID-19”, featuring SJRC Director Jenny Reardon.

Additionally, several courses have been designed to be offered in Spring 2020.

Founding Director Jenny Reardon has designed an undergraduate independent study seminar SOCY 194: Living and Learning in a Pandemic: The Sociology of COVID-19, that will draw upon insights from the Sociology of Medicine, Science and Technology Studies, Feminist Studies and Critical Race Theory to study the current pandemic, COVID-19.

Sociology Assistant Professor Rebecca London has designed an undergraduate course, SOCY 139T-02: Coronavirus and community: Sociological research on impacts and responses to the pandemic, that will center around a call for papers from Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public.

Graduate Training Program

In Winter 2020, the SJRC celebrated the Science & Justice Training Program’s 10th anniversary. As the accessibility of the university is being utterly transformed, we want to ask: how can what the COVID-19 public health crisis makes visible help us to rebuild a different university in the wake of this pandemicene? Meet our new cohort of fellows and learn more about their projects.

Developing Blogs & Calls To Action

The SJRC aims to make visible the many themes and calls to action that will emerge. SJRC affiliate faculty, undergraduate and graduate student researchers may contribute towards our developing blogs or use the platform to post their own writings for public consumption. Students of the SOCY 194 course and SJRC interns are developing an online zine. Calls will be shared and archived in the Center’s News Feed and on the COVID-19 Pandemicene’s project page.

Contact Founding Director Jenny Reardon (readon1@ucsc.edu) to get involved.

The Pandemicene Project: Re-Worlding Toward Justice

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How do we create knowledge that orients us towards justice at this critical historical juncture, in the middle of a viral pandemic, and a pandemic of social inequality and racial discrimination that has sparked global unrest? The Pandemicene Project begins from the premise that creating trust-worthy knowledge that can foster a more just world requires attending to both COVID-19 pandemic and the deep inequalities and fissures in the polity that this pandemic has laid bare. It also requires attending both to what is going on locally (e.g., from the shelter-in-place locations of our students), while drawing on the power and insights of global networks. In this project, UCSC faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduates students have worked together to interview members of their communities and the Science & Justice network about scholarly and activist responses to this critical historical moment.  The project has produced a podcast series for our local radio station (KZSC 88.1 FM), and expanded the blog series on the SJRC website. Ultimately, through engaging our communities—both locally and globally—we aim to produce knowledge that can help all of us – scholars and scientists, students and activists – imagine and enact just futures both in our home state of California and in our communities worldwide.

The SJRC has a robust network of local and international public health experts, scholars, and practitioners leading the way with collecting resources for teaching about COVID-19, writing open response letters, developing news items, and calls to action, and organizing and participating in online events.

The SJRC will focus current research projects on the following emerging areas in the context of COVID-19:

  • Re-Worlding: Living and Learning Alone Together in the Pandemicene
  • Community, Civil Society and Social Justice Responses to COVID-19
  • Just Biomedicine in an Age of COVID-19:  How Can Researchers (Public Health, Genomics, Virologists, Bioethicists) Collaborate in New Ways?
  • The Challenges of Knowing and Responding in the Age of No Data and Mis-information
  • The Crisis of Public Health in Infrastructures of Care and Incarceration

Read more on these developing areas of concern in the campus news article, “Discrimination, governance, and trust in the age of COVID-19”, featuring SJRC Founding Director Jenny Reardon; in the special issue of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers featuring S&J Advisor and Politics Professor Matt Sparke’s article, “Contextualizing Coronavirus Geographically,” provides additional articles and perspectives on the pandemic; and in the Daily Beast Interview, featuring James Doucet-Battle, assistant professor of sociology and interim director of SJRC on the glaring race problems COVID-19 vaccine trials have.

If you would like to take part in or contribute to this project, email Jenny Reardon (reardon1@ucsc.edu) and/or Colleen Stone (colleen@ucsc.edu).

Faculty

Jenny Reardon (Sociology)

Graduate Researchers

Dennis Browe (Sociology)

Paloma Medina (Biomolecular Engineering)

Dorothy Santos (Film & Digital Media)

Lucia Vitale (Politics)

Undergraduate Researchers

Kathia Damian (Literature, Talk and News Director KZSC Santa Cruz 88.1 FM)

Gina Barba (Community Studies)

Isa Ansari (Sociology)

Maryam Nazir (Philosophy)

Teresa (Tee) Wicks

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COVID-19: Open Letters

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The SJRC has a robust network of local and international public health experts, scholars, and practitioners leading the way with collecting resources for teaching about COVID-19, writing open response letters, developing news items, and calls for action, and organizing and participating in online events.

Help Spread the Word of These Open Letters

Achieving A Fair and Effective COVID-19 Response: An Open Letter to Vice-President Mike Pence, and Other Federal, State and Local Leaders from Public Health and Legal Experts in the United States

America’s Bioethicists: Government Must Use Federal Powers to Fight Covid-19

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COVID-19: Calls-For-Action

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The SJRC has a robust network of local and international public health experts, scholars, and practitioners leading the way with collecting resources for teaching about COVID-19, writing open response letters, developing news items, and calls for action, and organizing and participating in online events.

Help Spread the Word of These Calls for Action

In a New York Daily News Op-Ed, Susan M. Reverby calls for “Prisons and public health: Gov. Cuomo must let out thousands or many will die” (March 27, 2020) (PDF)

A Santa Cruz doctor releases a Call To Action for Healthcare Workers: “We can no longer in good conscience let politics endanger our nation in #COVID19 pandemic. Time to #LetTheScientistsLead.” (March 26, 2020)

PIH Health is preparing for a shortage of personal protective by calling for donations (March 21, 2020)

A powerful call for action from ER doctor, Joshua Lerner for the urgent need to shift production to focus on Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) manufacturing to protect those on the frontline.(March 21, 2020)

UCSC scientists round-up supplies for local doctors to combat COVID-19 (March 18, 2020)

Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public Call for Papers (March 15, 2020)

Mount Sinai COVID-19 calls for plasma donations

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COVID-19: Resources for Teaching

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The SJRC has a robust network of local and international public health experts, scholars, and practitioners leading the way with collecting resources for teaching about COVID-19, writing open response letters, developing news items, and calls for action and organizing and participating in online events.

Looking to teach about Covid-19 (coronavirus)?

Follow the conversation on Twitter via #teachthevirus, #CoronaVirusSyllabus, and #CoronaSyllabus

Open Access Reading Lists

#CoronaVirusSyllabus

Teaching COVID-19: An Anthropology Syllabus Project

UC Santa Cruz Spring 2020 Courses addressing COVID-19

SOCY 139T-02: Coronavirus and community: Sociological research on impacts and responses to the pandemic, will center around a recently released call for papers from Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public. Taking a social science perspective and building on students’ own interests, the course will provide support for independent research projects that explore COVID-19 from a variety of vantage points. For example, students might explore the ways that the pandemic has affected election politics, food security, access to health care for college students, quality of education, income inequality, continuity of work, social isolation, or a variety of other topics. Research could include exploration of news or social media coverage, online surveys, historical analyses, ethnography, interviews (conducted remotely), community mapping, or other methods. Students will choose their own research topic and conduct an original research project, working through the research design, data collection, analysis, and writing process through the course. Instructor: Rebecca London. Enrollment is by application and permission of the instructor.

SOCY 194: Living and Learning in a Pandemic: The Sociology of COVID-19, will draw upon insights from the Sociology of Medicine, Science and Technology Studies, Feminist Studies and Critical Race Theory to study the current pandemic, COVID-19. The class will be part seminar and part group research. During the first two weeks of class, students will form research teams to focus on various aspects of the pandemic, and how different communities and sectors of society are responding. Key questions at the heart of our discussions will be: How are ‘health,’ ‘society,’ the ‘self,’ and ‘community’ being remade in this moment? Who and what has the authority and trust needed to remake these vital things, and effectively govern and respond to this global health crisis? Key themes will include: trust in science and government; new forms of stratification; medicalization; labor on the frontline (new vulnerabilities); the crisis of neoliberalism; a new social contract for public health and justice. Periodically, students will hear from guest lecturers who are on the frontlines of the pandemic, including labor organizers, public health professionals and scientists. Students will both produce independent research and works of public sociology designed to help share information with their communities about the pandemic. Prerequisites: SOCY121, SOCY 121G, an equivalent class, or have been admitted to the Science & Justice Internship/IS program by permission of instructor. Instructor: J. Reardon. Limited to 20 students.