Events

CHAIRPERSON

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

PROGRAM

ABSTRACT

This roundtable focuses on connections between trauma and epidemics, especially respiratory pandemics in historical and contemporary contexts in Asia. It features two recently published books, namely Nichola Khan’s The Breath of Empire: Breathing with Historical Trauma in Anglo-Chinese Relations (Palgrave 2022) and Teresita Cruz del Rosario’s Far from My Hospital Bed: Reflections on the Pandemic and Society (Penguin 2022). Together, the authors approach the concept of trauma by drawing on the history of respiratory diseases since the 1800s in British Hong Kong and wider imperial Asia on the one hand, and personal accounts of experiencing Covid-19 on the other. Situating in anthropological, historical, and sociological framings, Khan and Del Rosario unpack and contextualize trauma through perspectives including gender, memories, and home. In doing so, the two authors link epidemics-caused trauma to broader social, political, economic, and cultural issues by examining how trauma is understood and experienced by different communities on the ground in epidemic times. The roundtable is designed as a forum for interdisciplinary conversations through the participation of Prof Chow Wan Cheng (Duke-NUS Medical School) and Dr Hannah Ho who is a literature specialist.

Links to the two books:
The Breath of Empire: Breathing with Historical Trauma in Anglo-Chinese Relations
Far from My Hospital Bed: Reflections on the Pandemic and Society

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Nichola Khan is Reader in Anthropology and Psychology, and Co-Director of the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics at the University of Brighton. Her work is linked by an ethnographic exploration of violent pasts and presents in the context of war and conflict-related migration across colonial and contemporary Asia and Europe. She has explored these processes in relation to (a) migration and violence in urban environments (b) transnational refugee migration, and mobilities (c) migration and health/mental illness. She has published four books: Mohajir Militancy in Pakistan (2010, 2012, Routledge); Cityscapes of Violence in Karachi (2017 ed., Oxford University Press; Hurst & Co.); Arc of the Journeyman: Afghan Migrants in England (2020, Uiversity of Minnesota Press; and Mental Disorder: Anthropological Insights (2017, University of Toronto Press). Her fifth book, in press, titled The Breath of Empire (Palgrave series in Literary Anthropology) draws on her own family history. It analyses interconnected legacies of war and migration across intimate fields of Anglo-Chinese relations, and asks how research onto colonial trauma can ameliorate its lived effects.

Teresita Cruz-del Rosario was formerly Visiting Associate Professor at the New York University in Abu Dhabi and also at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. She is currently affiliated with the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore where she is a research associate. She has written and published four books all written in the tradition of political sociology and public policy. Her latest book Far from my Hospital Bed: Reflections on the Pandemic and Society (Penguin 2022) departs from traditional academic writing. She employs literary non-fiction as a writing genre to explore various pandemic-related themes, among them, altruism, racism, religion, and sexuality. In this book, she describes her writing style as part story-telling, part autobiography, part meditation, part memory, part history, part sociology, and part manifesto. She has a background in sociology, social anthropology and public administration from Boston College, New York University, Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Hannah Ming Yit Ho is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD). She read her PhD in contemporary literature at the University of York, United Kingdom. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Kings’ College London and University of California, Berkeley. At UBD, she teaches postcolonial writings, gender in literature, and minority literatures. Amongst others, her research focusses on medical humanities. Her work appears in The Face of Depression in Literature (Routledge 2021). She is the principal investigator for the research project entitled “Literary and Media Representations of Mental Health in Brunei Darussalam” that explores social stigma that inhibits mental health access to those experiencing trauma as illustrated in fiction. She is also Brunei Darussalam’s national team leader under Asia Research Institute of National University of Singapore’s regional research project “Living with COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: Crisis, Control and Community”.

Wan Cheng Chow is Vice Dean of the Office of Academic and Clinical Development of Duke-NUS Medical School; and Senior Consultant in Gastroenterology & Hepatology at the Singapore General Hospital. The Office of Academic and Clinical Development leads, catalyses and coordinates Duke-NUS’ role in the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre (AMC) by enabling and implementing Academic Medicine strategies. It also develops capabilities and supports academic recognition, appointment and development of faculty.

REGISTRATION

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