Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Gerard McCarthy, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

PROGRAM

ABSTRACT

How do people make sense of a world transformed by contagion? What role do social scientists and historians have in recording these experiences? The emergence of COVID-19 and the dramatic restriction of social interaction that followed it altered the socio-economic and material environments of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Drawing on hundreds of unique oral histories conducted in New York City and across Southeast Asia during the pandemic, the two papers of this seminar examine experiences of crisis, control, agency and community amid the social upheaval of the past two years. Using the social destabilization of the crisis as an opportunity to observe normally taken-for-granted processes of meaning-making, identity and reciprocity the seminar considers the insight oral history offers into the shifting fabric of everyday life and the implications for the shape of the pandemic for social and political systems in the years ahead.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Denise Milstein is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University and Co-Director of the New York City COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive.  Her work develops a relational, historically grounded perspective at the intersection of art and politics, and culture and the environment.

Naoko Shimazu is Professor of Humanities (History) at Yale-NUS College and Leader of the Inter-Asia Engagements Cluster at Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Professor Shimazu is a global historian of Asia, especially the social and cultural history of modern societies at war, and is currently working on the cultural history of global diplomacy. She co-led the ‘Living with COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: Crisis, Control and Community’ project along with Dr Gerard McCarthy and Dr Yang Yang.

Tinesh Indrarajah graduated from Yale-NUS College with a BA in History and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at National University of Singapore with a Master in Public Policy. He led the Malaysia team of the ‘Living with COVID-19 in Southeast Asia’ project.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this webinar has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the webinar.