1,000 Words Project, “SARS-CoV-2: What Kind of Crisis is This?”

All of us in the University community have been deeply submerged into a world dominated by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Several months into responding to this health crisis, many parts of our lives have been challenged, disrupted, and changed. The shock, dislocation, and sometimes despair people feel are often not explicitly health-related, but result from encountering aspects of the crisis that, while seemingly peripheral, are actually integral to this new “pandemic culture.” IPEC members have been discussing the reach of this crisis into almost every aspect of our lives and we want to make available to you what is also “in crisis” as seen from our various areas of expertise in policy, ethics, and culture.

To address this, we began the “1,000 words project,” in which we asked IPEC members to explore the nature of the crisis, dislocations, and challenges as they see it from their unique perspectives. 

• "A Crisis of Sociality: Diminishing Our Lives Together" by Patty Sotirin, Professor of Communication.
• "A Crisis of Expertise" by Jennifer Daryl Slack, Professor of Communication and Cultural Studies.
• "Who Can You Trust During the Coronavirus Crisis?" by Adam Wellstead, Professor of Public Policy, Social Sciences and Paul Cairney, Professor of Politics, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Stirling.
• "Exposure, the Ultimate Challenge in a Market Society" by Soonkwan Hong, Associate Professor of Marketing.
• “Math Communication in Crisis: Responding to Numbers during a Pandemic” by Andrew Fiss, Assistant Professor of Technical and Professional Communication.
• “Science Antagonism in the American Coronavirus Context” by Marina Choy, PhD Student, Humanities.
• “We Live in a Cost-Benefit Analysis Society” by Nancy Barr, Professor of Practice, Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics.
• “An Ethical Crisis: Covid-19 and the Valuing of Human Lives” by Alexandra Morrison, Assistant Professor of Philosophy.
• "A Crisis of Access: COVID-19 and the Digital Divide” by Charles Wallace, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Associate Dean for Curriculum & Instruction.
• “The Scientific Method on Display” by Caryn Heldt, Director, Health Research Institute, James and Lorna Mack Chair in Bioengineering.
• “We are Left with Marble Statues” by Libby Meyer, Senior Lecturer of Music Theory and Composition.
• “A Crisis of Lockdown Ethics” by Veena Namboodri, PhD Student, Humanities.