Teaching COVID-19:

An Anthropology Syllabus Project

Class Activities, Lessons, and Labs

• What’s Your COVID-19 Economy? - ethnographic interviewing assignment: Katie Nelson. Katie Nelson designed an ethnographic interviewing assignment for her American Culture course, called “What’s Your COVID-19 Economy?”. Students interviewed someone they live with about how the COVID-19 crisis has affected them economically, connecting to themes in the course. In their write up, students were asked to reflect on the rapid cultural and economic shift caused by the crisis. The assignment gave students the opportunity to use an anthropological lens to examine a phenomenon affecting them intimately, but in a way that allowed some space for reflection by focusing on another person. Some students explored how certain low-status jobs were suddenly viewed as essential and highly valued culturally, even while monetarily they continue to be underpaid. Other students made connections with David Graeber’s insights on the phenomenon of “bullshit” jobs and questioned if the existence of these jobs would continue after the crisis. One student wrote about the death of her grandfather and how the loss would impact the family economy and cultural traditions. Another student discussed strategies her mother was taking to shore up the family restaurant business by collaborating with a neighboring restaurant, something she would never have considered before. On the whole, the assignment resulted in some surprisingly insightful papers.
• Data; Statistics: Honnor, Patrick. 2020. “Dangerous Numbers? Teaching About Data and Statistics Using the Coronavirus Outbreak.” New York Times, February 27.
• Education; Children; Gender: Daniels, Nichole. 2020. “Lesson of the Day: ‘When Can We Go to School?’ Nearly 300 Million Children Are Missing Class.” New York Times, March 6.
• See materials and resources at Teach311+COVID-19
• Activity/Assignment suggestion: From Jonah Rubin (@js_rubin), Last Med Anthro class of the term at @KnoxCollege1837 is tomorrow. Students will embody one of our authors and speak about how they would understand and suggest responding to COVID-19. Some will write papers about that as well.

• Multimodal class project: From Dada Docot (Purdue, @dadadocot): Goal: To make and share responsibly produced media focused on the expansive issues surrounding the outbreak. Instructions: Produce a shareable work using any medium of your choice with the broad theme -- “coronavirus.” Students can choose to create a short film, infographic, public service announcement, comics, trailer, animated work, a series of photographs, etc. Sample topics could include: caring for the elderly during the outbreak; coronavirus and pets; universities’, rural towns’ and cities’ responses to the outbreak; race, racialization, and xenophobia; containment and borders, etc. The output out of this project must 1) be based on research, 2) shareable/open source, and 3) respectful of cultural minorities. To find resources for your project, visit this open-source syllabus. Platforms that could be used for uploading your project include Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Submit the link to your project accompanied by a 300-word abstract.

• New York Times Learning Network: Coronavirus Resources: Teaching, Learning and Thinking Critically - a website that promises to continually update as the pandemic proceeds with free teaching resources and activities.

• Public/Global Health response to pandemics, 1: The Great Flu is an online game in which players select a fictional virus (of varying difficulty for game play) and then must quickly make decisions about how to respond to an outbreak.
• Public/Global Health response to pandemics, 2:Solve the Outbreak is another online activity in which players select a virus and location and then work to solve an outbreak. This online activity is hosted by the CDC.
• Geography of COVID-19: Lesson plan and materials from World Regional Geography Lab Manual.
• Research COVID-19 from an Anthropological Perspective (from a Parasites in Human Evolution course): From Tara Robins: For this assignment, you will do external research on the currently spreading coronavirus, called COVID-19. Try to analyze this virus from an anthropological perspective, applying your knowledge of both evolutionary theory and biocultural anthropology. The assignment is a 3 to 5 page double-spaced research paper that answers the following questions from an anthropological perspective (when possible): What is COVID-19? How did it likely start? How does it spread? Why has it been so successful at spreading around the world? What can be and is being done to slow/stop its progression, and what methods are most effective? Why is an anthropological perspective important for understanding the spread of this pathogen? Make sure to assess your sources for credibility, cite your sources, and include a list of citations. Upload your paper here on Canvas as a .doc or .pdf file.
• Keep a pandemic journal: More details and resources in this twitter thread by Lance Gravlee; see also this Pandemic Journaling Project led by Sarah Willen and Katherine Mason

• This is a crowd-sourced list of COVID-19 documentation projects. Check to see if there’s one at your institution or in your local area.
• The following resource could help support a journaling project: This is a small collection of excerpts from firsthand accounts of epidemics throughout history.  Tina Ulrich worked with Ryan Johnson, history faculty from St. Clair County Community College, to create this resource for faculty who want to use experiences from the past to help students interpret the present. Each chapter has a brief introduction, glossary, questions for discussion, and sources.  It's licensed CC BY-SA so faculty can write their own discussion questions to suit their discipline and their students: Plague Diaries:  Firsthand Accounts of Epidemics, 430 B.C. to A.D. 1918

• Write a letter to a public official; See also this call for advocacy letters from Somatosphere, which includes links to additional information and letter-writing advice
• Choose an artifact to represent the crisis in a museum exhibit 100 years from now. Assignment from Kevin Mitchell Mercer, University of Central Florida.
• A Day in the Life of a Pandemic: Assignment from Natalia Molina. Students pick one data and explore what COVID-19 looked like at different scales including: Their own daily life; International response; Federal/national response; Municipal and/or state response; The financial markets; Pop culture; News events; Sports; News coverage (e.g. left leaning vs. right leaning); Popular songs; Trending hashtags; Weather.
• COVID Cultures assignment and collection of student work from M. Gabriella Torres at Wheaton College
• COVID-19 Student Ethnographic Portfolio Project, supported by the Disaster STS Network. Resources for instructors and students, including a portfolio of assignments that guide students through ethnographic knowledge production about COVID-19. Includes the COVID-19 Rapid Student Interview Project, which aims to provide an engaging project for post-secondary students (undergraduate and graduate) to gain experience with qualitative research methodology while contributing to public discussions about everyday experiences with COVID-19.

Lecture slides

• Amara Miller, CSU East Bay,The Social Science of COVID-19
• Tara Cepon Robins, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, Anthropological Perspectives on Public Health Emergences and COVID-19 (originally from Parasites in Human Evolution course). Created 4/10/2020

Reflections on teaching and learning in a pandemic

• Alexander, Kelly. “Our Culinary Cultures: Food in the time of COVID-19.” Duke Arts, May 3, 2020.
• Chin, Elizabeth. Radical Pedagogies (keynote address at Society for Cultural Anthropology Distribute Conference, May 2020.
• Torres, M. Gabriella. 2020. “Learning about global health while living in a pandemic.” Wheaton College Blog, May 12.

Readings/Materials (with preliminary categories)

Note: Many of these are news articles, and it’s best to pay attention to the dates. As the situation develops, statistics and other info may change rapidly.

What is COVID-19?: Background, Timelines, Resources

• World Health Organization: Coronavirus
• CDC: Coronavirus Disease 2019
• Ars Technica “Don’t Panic: the comprehensive Ars Technica guide to the coronavirus.” Updated daily at 3pm EDT.
• Belluck, Pam. “What Does Coronavirus Do to the Body?” New York Times, March 11, 2020.
• Cyranoski, David. 2020. “Mystery deepens over animal source of coronavirus.” Nature News, February 26.
• Doucleff, Michaeleen, and Jane Greenhalgh. “Why Killer Viruses Are On The Rise.” NPR All Things Considered, audio and text, February 14, 2017

• NPR produced several articles in 2017 under the #KillerViruses tag. This one provides a general background to zoonosis and efforts to track/predict outbreaks.

• Williams, Shawna. “Studies Estimate Incubation Time, Infectious Period of SARS-CoV-2.” The Scientist, March 10, 2020.
• PBS News Hour Special Podcast Understanding Corona Virus a Special Episode March 19th https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/understanding-the-coronavirus-a-special-episode/id394432287?i=1000468924726
• NPR Corona  Virus Daily Podcast https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510355/coronavirusdaily
• The Social Distancing Project https://www.thesocialdistanceproject.org/

Overviews, Resource Roundups, and Special Collections

• American Ethnological Society, Pandemic Diaries
• Higgins, Rylan, Emily Martin, and Maria D. Vespiri, eds. 2020. “An Anthropology of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Special Issue of Anthropology Now 12 (1).
• Collecting COVID-19: Anthropological Responses: A crowd-sourced digital ethnography of the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Duke University Press, Free access to books and journal articles on pandemics
• Environment and Society Portal, “Pandemics in Context.”
• Jugovic-Spajic, Anika. 2020. “Web Roundup: What Can the Coronavirus Outbreak Tell Us About Capitalism, White Supremacy, and Climate Change?” Somatosphere, February 28.
• Medical Anthropology Quarterly COVID-19 Responses
• Open Anthropology, Pandemic Perspectives. Volume 8, Issue 1, April 2020. 
• Somatosphere, COVID-19 Forum (March 6) and COVID-19 Forum II (April 6)

“Somatosphere’s COVID-19 Forum brings together seventeen anthropologists and historians in an effort to share ideas, analytical frameworks and concerns about the ongoing epidemic from interdisciplinary perspectives.”

Anthropologists’ reports and reflections

• Boke, Charis. “Fever/Rest.” March 14, 2020. [Personal reflection as well as discussion of reactions to the Yellow Fever epidemic.]
• Lynteris, Christos. COVID-19 Forum: Introduction. Somatosphere, March 6, 2020.
• Haruyama, Justin, Laura Meek, and Ria Sinha. 2020. “Going Viral in Hong Kong.” Anthropology News website, March 3, 2020. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1364 
• Ní Mhórdha, Máire. “Taking it Seriously: Comparing COVID-Unintended Impacts of COVID-19 Social Distancing | Medical Humanities19 to Malaria.” The Familiar Strange blog, March 30, 2020.
• Raffaetà, Roberta. “From Italy: Anthropological Reflections on Coronavirus COVID-19” (audio with transcript)
• Rose, Karen. “Wiped Clean: Why the run on toilet paper? An anthropological perspective.” Seattle Refined, March 20, 2020.
• Sangaramoorthy, Thurka. “Unintended Impacts of COVID-19 Social Distancing.” BMJ Medical Humanities Blog, March 27, 2020.
• Otsuki, Grant. “Shit’s getting real: A cultural analysis of toilet paper.” Personal blog, March 11, 2020.
• Von Baeyer, Sarah LeBaron. 2020. “An Anthropologist’s Perspective on COVID-19: Q&A with Dr. Adia Benton.” Medium, April 29.
• Sue, K., & Iacobelli, N. “Notes from Physician-Anthropologists on the Frontlines of an Evolving Pandemic in Seattle and New York City.” Somatosphere,  April 7, 2020. 
• Caduff, Carlo. “What Went Wrong: Corona and the World after the Full Stop.”
• Singer, Merrill. 2020. “The Lessons Anthropology Learned from HIV/AIDS.” Somatosphere, June 20. 

Anthropologists’ roles in health emergencies

• Moran, Mary, and Daniel Hoffman. 2014. “Ebola in Perspective”  Hot Spots, Fieldsights, October 7. [many contributions to this collection offering various perspectives on the West Africa Ebola epidemic]
• Sams, Kelley, Alice Desclaux, Julienne Anoko, Francis Akindès, Marc Egrot, Khoudia Sow, Bernard Taverne, Blandine Bila, Michèle Cros, Moustapha Keïta-Diop, Mathieu Fribault, and Annie Wilkinson. 2017. "From Ebola to Plague and Beyond: How Can Anthropologists Best Engage Past Experience to Prepare for New Epidemics?." Member Voices, Fieldsights, December 7.
• Stellmach, Darryl et al. 2018. “Anthropology in public health emergencies: what is anthropology good for?” BMJ Global Health 3 (2): e000534.doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2017-000534

Anthropological and Sociohistorical perspectives on infectious disease/epidemics

• See Other COVID-19 Syllabus Projects for extensive sociological, historical, and humanities scholarship on epidemics
• Abramowitz, Sharon. 2017. “Epidemics (Especially Ebola).” Annual Review of Anthropology 46(1): 421-445
• Barry, John M. “How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America.” Smithsonian Magazine, November 2017.
• Brown, Peter and Marcia Inhorn. 1997. The Anthropology of Infectious Disease: International Health Perspectives. Routledge.
• Chigudu, Simukai. “From cholera to corona, the politics of plagues in Africa.” Africa Is A Country, March 23 2020.
• Dingwall, Robert, Lily M.Hoffman, and Karen Staniland, eds. “Special Issue: Pandemics and Emerging Infectious Diseases: The Sociological Agenda.” Sociology of Health and Illness 35 (2).
• Downs, Jim. “The Epidemics America Got Wrong.” The Atlantic, March 22, 2020.
• Dupras, C., M.Sc, & Williams-Jones, B. (2012). The expert and the lay public: Reflections on influenza A (H1N1) and the risk society. American Journal of Public Health, 102(4), 591-5.
• Farmer, Paul. 1999. Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Harvard Library, “Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics”

• Description of archives: “This online collection offers important historical perspectives on the science and public policy of epidemiology today and contributes to the understanding of the global, social–history, and public–policy implications of diseases.”

• Kleinman, Arthur and James Watson, eds. 2005. SARS in China: Prelude to Pandemic? Stanford University Press.
• Lasco, Gideon. “Why Face Masks Are Going Viral.” Sapiens, February 7, 2020.
• Lynteris, Christos. 2020. “Why Do People Really Wear Face Masks During an Epidemic?” New York Times, February 13.
• Rosenberg, Charles E. 1989. “What is an epidemic: AIDS in historical perspective.” Daedalus 118 (2): 1-17.
• Sams, Kelley, Alice Desclaux, Julienne Anoko, Francis Akindès, Marc Egrot, Khoudia Sow, Bernard Taverne, Blandine Bila, Michèle Cros, Moustapha Keïta-Diop, Mathieu Fribault, and Annie Wilkinson. 2017. "From Ebola to Plague and Beyond: How Can Anthropologists Best Engage Past Experience to Prepare for New Epidemics?." Member Voices, Fieldsights, December 7.
• Sangaramoorthy, Thurka. 2014. Treating AIDS: Politics of Difference, Paradox of Prevention. Rutgers University Press.
• Segata, J. “Covid-19: scales of pandemics and scales of anthropology.” Somatosphere, April 2, 2020.
• Singer, Merrill. 2016. The Anthropology of Infectious Disease. Routledge.
• Snowden, Frank M. 2019. Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present. Yale University Press.
• Wright, Robin. “Coping, Camaraderie, and Human Evolution Amid the Coronavirus Crisis.” New Yorker, March 12 2020.
• Zhan, Mei. 2005. “Civet Cats, Fried Grasshoppers, And David Beckham's Pajamas: Unruly Bodies After Sars” American Anthropologist 107(1)31-42. https://Doi.Org/10.1525/Aa.2005.107.1.031

Ethnographies of pandemics (overlap with above?)

• Gomez‐Temesio, Veronica. “Outliving Death: Ebola, Zombies, and the Politics of Saving Lives.” American Anthropologist 120, no. 4: 738-751. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13126.

Ethnographic methods in outbreaks/public health investigations

• Kroeger, Karen A., Thurka Sangaramoorthy, Penny S Loosier, Rebecca Schmidt, DeAnn Gruber. 2018. “Pathways to congenital syphilis prevention: A rapid qualitative assessment of barriers, and the public health response, in Caddo Parish, Louisiana.” Sexually Transmitted Diseases 45(7): 442-446. doi: 10.1097/OLQ.0000000000000787.
• Sangaramoorthy, Thurka and Karen Kroeger. 2020. Rapid Ethnographic Assessments: A Practical Approach and Toolkit For Collaborative Community Research. Routledge.
• Sangaramoorthy, Thurka and Karen Kroeger. 2013. “Mobility, Latino Migrants, and the Geography of Sex Work: Using Ethnography in Public Health Assessments.” Human Organization 72(3):263–272. doi:10.17730/humo.72.3.q1m53143x42p0653.

Anthropological perspectives on public health/epidemiology

• Briggs, Charles L. 2004. "Theorizing Modernity Conspiratorially: Science, Scale, and the Political Economy of Public Discourse in Explanations of a Cholera Epidemic."  American Ethnologist 31 (2):164-187.
• Goldstein, Diane. 2004. Once Upon A Virus: AIDS Legends and Vernacular Risk Perception.  (download free here: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/32/)  
• Kitta, Andrea. 2019. The Kiss of Death: Contagion and Contamination in Folklore. Utah State University Press. (50% off with code INFODEMIC20)

• Author in video referencing COVID-19: https://youtu.be/-x6gKUG6DTE 
• Author in a podcast episode: https://newbooksnetwork.com/andrea-kitta-the-kiss-of-death-contagion-contamination-and-folklore-utah-state-up-2019/ 

• Lynteris, Christos and Branwyn Poleykett. 2018. “The Anthropology of Epidemic Control: Technologies and Materialities.” Medical Anthropology 37 (6): 433-441. Introduction to a special issue on Technologies and Materialities of Epidemic Control. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2018.1484740
• Mason, Katherine. 2016. Infectious Change: Reinventing Chinese Public Health after an Epidemic. Stanford University Press. [Ethnography about the professionalization and ethics of public health in China following the 2003 SARS epidemic]

Global health 

• Janes, Craig R. and Kitty K. Corbett. “Anthropology and Global Health.” Annual Review of Anthropology 2009 38:1, 167-183.

The “Outbreak Narrative”

• Benton, Adia. 2020. “Race, epidemics, and the viral economy of health expertise.” The New Humanitarian, February 4 2020.
• McCormick, S. and Whitney, K. 2013. The making of public health emergencies: West Nile virus in New York City. Sociology of Health & Illness, 35: 268-279. doi:10.1111/1467-9566.12002
• Wald, Priscilla. 2008. Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative. Durham: Duke University Press.

How do scientists know what they know about viruses?

• Dr. John Campbell video lectures: https://www.youtube.com/user/Campbellteaching
• Caduff, Carlo. The pandemic perhaps: dramatic events in a public culture of danger. Univ of California Press, 2015. [free excerpt of first chapter available online at UCAPress website]

Research and Biomedical Ethics

• Noko, Karsten. 2020. “Medical colonialism in Africa is not new.” Al Jazeera, April 8.

“Unnatural” Disasters

• Film Series: Unnatural Causes: California Newsreel. 2008: https://unnaturalcauses.org/

Climate and Environment

• Mason, Katherine. “Gasping for Air in the Time of COVID-19.” Sapiens, March 18, 2020.
• Osaka, Shannon. 2020. “Study: The tiniest bit of air pollution makes COVID-19 more deadly.” Grist, April 9.
• Peters, Glen. How changes brought on by coronavirus could help tackle climate change. The Conversation, March 17 2020.
• Burgos Martinez, Elena https://environmentalhumanitiescenter.com/2020/04/08/ecoracism-in-times-of-covid-19-rhetoric-an-environmental-humanities-perspective/ Environmental Humanities Center, March, 2020

Governance

• Benton, Adia, Thurka Sangaramoorthy, and Ippolytos Kalofonos. 2017. Temporality and Positive Living in the Age of HIV/AIDS--A Multi-Sited Ethnography. Current Anthropology 58(4): 454-476. doi:10.1086/692825.

Borders and Movement (see also “Structural Vulnerability” for issues related to immigration)

• Benton, Adia. “Border Promiscuity, Illicit Intimacies, and Origin Stories,” Somatosphere, March 6 2020.
• Taylor, R.C. 2013. “The politics of securing borders and the identities of disease.” Sociology of Health & Illness, 35: 241-254. doi:10.1111/1467-9566.12009

Militarization and Securitization (Policing and the military positioned as public health solutions, “War” metaphors)

• Benton, Adia. “The Epidemic Will be Militarized: Watching Outbreak as the West African Ebola Epidemic Unfolds.” Cultural Anthropology, Hot Spots Series. (Ebola comparison)

Surveillance

• Sangaramoorthy, Thurka. 2012. “Treating the numbers: HIV/AIDS surveillance, subjectivity, and risk.” Medical Anthropology, 31(4):292-309. doi: 10.1080/01459740.2011.622322.

Racialization and Xenophobia

• Aguilera, Jasmine. “Xenophobia 'Is A Pre-Existing Condition.' How Harmful Stereotypes and Racism are Spreading Around the Coronavirus.” Time Magazine, February 3, 2020.
• Brizzolara, Joe and Chelsea Kirk. 2020. “Before ‘Chinese Virus’ there was ‘Mexican Disease’ in LA: Remember the burning of the city’s ‘Mexican Village’ in 1924.” LA Taco, May 19.
• Carter, Chelsea and Ezelle Sanford III. 2020. “The myth of Black immunity: Racialized Disease during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Black Perspectives, AAIHS, April 3. 
• Dillard, Coshandra. “Speaking Up Against Racism Around the New coronavirus.” Teaching Tolerance, February 14, 2020.
• Kim, Joey S. “Orientalism in the age of COVID-19.” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 24, 2020.
• Lee, Matthew. 2020. “Coronavirus fears show how ‘model minority’ Asian Americans become the ‘yellow peril.” NBC News, March 9.
• Lee, Marie Myung-Ok. 2020. “‘Wuhan coronavirus’ and the racist art of naming a virus.” Salon, February 7.
• Neves, Joshua. “The Coronavirus (Covid-19), Anti-chinese Racism, And The Politics Of Underglobalization.” Duke University Press Blog, March 11, 2020.
• Sangaramoorthy, Thurka and Adia Benton. From #EbolaBeGone to #BlackLivesMatter: Anthropology, misrecognition, and the racial politics of crisis. Savage Minds, January 16, 2015.
• Sabrina Tavernise and Richard A. Oppel Jr. “Spit on, yelled at, attacked: Chinese Americans fear for their safety.” New York Times, March 23, 2020.
• Vincent, Danny. 2020. “Africans in China: We face coronavirus discrimination.” BBC News, April 17.

Syndemics

• Blow, Charles. 2020. “The Racial Time Bomb in the COVID-19 Crisis.” New York Times, April 1.
• Eligon, John. 2020. “For Urban Poor, the Coronavirus Complicates Existing Health Risks.” New York Times, March 7.
• Gravlee, Clarence. 2020. “It’s about racism, not race, when coronavirus hits communities of color hard.” Tampa Bay Times, April 15.
• Herrick, Clare. 2020. “Syndemics of COVID-19 and ‘pre-existing conditions.’” Somatosphere, March 30.
• Mendenhall, Emily. 2020. “Why social policies make coronavirus worse.” ThinkGlobalHealth, March 27.
• Newkirk, Vann R. II. 2020. “The Coronavirus’s unique threat to the South.” The Atlantic, April 2.
• Nordling, Linda. “'A ticking time bomb:' Scientists worry about coronavirus spread in Africa.” Science Magazine - News, March 15 2020. doi:10.1126/science.abb7331
• Bulled, Nicola and  Singer, Merrill. “In the Shadow of HIV & TB: A Commentary on the COVID-19 epidemic in South Africa.” Global Public Health 15(8).
• Singer, Merrill “Syndemics and Health.” Defining Moments Canada. 2020.

Structural vulnerability

• Chapin, Angelina. “An outbreak of coronavirus along the border could be deadly and devastating.” Huffington Post, March 11, 2020.
• Finerman, Grace. 2020. “Homeless shelters struggle with social distancing during COVID-19 scare.” WKYT, March 8.
• Fisher, Max and Emma Bubola. “As Coronavirus Deepens Inequality, Inequality Worsens Its Spread.” New York Times, March 15, 2020.
• Galea, Sandro. 2020. “The Poor and Marginalized Will Be Hardest Hit by Coronavirus.” Scientific American, March 9.
• Givens, Maria. 2020. “The coronavirus is exacerbating vulnerabilities Native communities already face.” Vox, March 25.
• Herman, Bob. “Paul Farmer on the coronavirus: ‘this is another caregivers’ disease.’” Axios, March 9, 2020.
• Hume, Tim. “No Soap, Little Water, and No Way Out: Refugee Camps Brace for Coronavirus.” Vice News, March 13 2020.
• Jones, Sarah. “The Coronavirus Puts the Class War Into Stark Relief.” Intelligencer, March 10, 2020.
• Kendi, Ibram X. 2020. "What the racial data show." The Atlantic, April 6.
• Noko, Karsten. “In Africa, social distancing is a privilege few can afford.” Al Jazeera, March 22, 2020.
• Sharma, Dinesh. “Coronavirus Unmasks Global Inequities.” Psychology Today, April 12, 2020.
• Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. “The Black Plague.” The New Yorker, April 16, 2020.
• Thurston, Domina. “America’s poorest children won’t get nutritious meals with school cafeterias closed due to the coronavirus.” The Conversation, March 13 2020.
• Valentino-DeVries, Jennifer, Denise Lu, and Gabriel J.X. Dance. 2020. “Location Data Says it All: Staying at Home During Coronavirus is a Luxury.” New York Times, April 3.
• Williams, Cory. “Detroit Set to Restore Water Service Amid Coronavirus Fears.” AP News, March 9, 2020.
• Yuan, Li. 2020. “In Coronavirus Fight, China’s Vulnerable Fall through the Cracks.” New York Times, March 9.
• Zaman, Muhammad. “Opinion: Refugees Are Especially Vulnerable To COVID-19. Don't Ignore Their Needs.” NPR, March 11 2020.

Policing and Incarceration

• McKinley, Jesse. 2020. “Cuomo’s Fix for Sanitizer Shortage: 100,000 Gallons Made by Prisoners.” New York Times, March 9.
• Metcalf, Jerry. “No, your coronavirus quarantine is not just like prison.” The Marshall Project, March 25, 2020.
• NPR, 1A, 2020. Coronavirus and Prison Populations.
• #COVID19 Decarcerate Syllabus: A Political Education Resource; curated by California Coalition for Women Prisoners
• “Police Violence and the Pandemic: An Interview with Laurence Ralph.” Sapiens podcast, June 12, 2020. [Audio]

Disability

• Anonymous. 2020. “The structural silencing of disabled children and their parents: A reflection on who is absent in discussions about the toll of coronavirus.” Somatosphere, April 25.
• Charis Hill, “‘The Cripples Will Save You’: A Critical Coronavirus Message from a Disability Activist”
• Pfeiffer, Sacha. “US Hospitals Prepare Guidelines for Who Gets Care Amid Coronavirus Surge.” NPR, March 21, 2020.
• Ne’eman, Ari. “I will not apologize for my needs.” New York Times, March 23, 2020.
• Savin, Katie and Laura Guidry-Grimes. 2020. “Confronting Disability Discrimination During the Pandemic.” The Hastings Center, April 2.
• Resources by and for disability communities in the time of COVID-19.

Mental Health/Psychology/Panic

• Brewis, Alexandra, and Amber Wutich. “The Social Dangers of Saving Others From Coronavirus: Lessons from the frightening days of MERS.” Psychology Today, March 11, 2020.
• Glassner, Barry. “When fear upends daily life.” LA Times, March 12, 2020.
• Panayi, Adriana. 2020. “COVID-19 is likely to lead to an increase in suicides.” Scientific American, April 3.

Language

• Burgos Martinez, Elena. 2020. Towards a COVID-19 lexicon of conceptual off-shoots. Allegra Lab, April 23.
• Hubler, Shawn. 2020. “How do you sign: ‘Don’t drink bleach.’” New York Times, April 27.
• Williams, Eric Kostiak. 2020. “COVID and its Metaphors.” (Comic)
• Yates-Doerr, Emily. 2020. “‘Stay Home, Stay Healthy’ is Dangerous Language.” MS Magazine, April 3.

Gender

• In-gyu, Oh. “Why are Women in their 20s More Susceptible to Coronavirus in Korea?” The Korea Times, March 9, 2020.
• Godderis, R. and Rossiter, K. 2013. ‘If you have a soul, you will volunteer at once’: gendered expectations of duty to care during pandemics. Sociology of Health & Illness, 35: 304-308. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9566.2012.01495.x
• Jeltsen, Melissa. “Home is Not a Safe Place for Everyone.” Huffington Post, March 12 2020.
• Wenham, Clare, Julie Smith, and Rosemary Morgan. 2020. “COVID-19: the gendered impacts of the outbreak.” Lancet.
• Lewis, Helen. 2020. “The coronavirus is a disaster for feminism.” The Atlantic, March 19.

Health workers, systems, and infrastructure

• McFarling, Usha Lee. 2020. “Nursing ranks are filled with Filipino Americans. The pandemic is taking an outsized toll on them.” Stat, April 28.
• Sandesara, Utpal. 2020. “We need to protect the most vulnerable health care workers.” BMJ Blog, April 22.
• Specht, Liz. “What does the coronavirus mean for the U.S. health care system? Some simple math offers alarming answers.” STAT, March 10, 2020.
• Street, A. (2012). Affective infrastructure: Hospital landscapes of hope and failure. Space and Culture, 15(1), 44-56. https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331211426061
• Schoch-Spana, Monica. (2001). “Hospital’s Full Up: the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.” Public Health Rep 116(Suppl 2):32-33. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1497283/pdf/11880667.pdf
• “American Hospital Capacity And Projected Need for COVID-19 Patient Care, " Health Affairs Blog, March 17, 2020.https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200317.457910/full/

Health insurance/financing

• Paschal, Olivia. 2020. “COVID-19 exposes the precarious state of rural health care in the South.” Facing South, March 19. https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/03/covid-19-exposes-precarious-state-rural-health-care-south

Death and Dying

• Goldfield, Anna. 2020. “Coronavirus and Coping with Death.” Sapiens, April 17.
• Reddy, Sunita. 2020. “‘Discounted Deaths’ and COVID-19: Anthropology of Death and Emotions.” Devdiscourse, May 26.
• Solomon, Harris and Mara Buchbinder. 2020. “Lonely death in pandemic times.” Cultural Anthropology website, April 22.

Work (labor protection, sick-leave policies, etc.)

• “For how long are workers guaranteed paid sick leave?” World Policy Center map
• “How Lack of Paid Sick Leave is Complicating US Virus Response.” PBS News Hour, March 6, 2020. [video & transcript]
• Law, Tara. 2020. “Americans are Being Encouraged to Work from Home During the Coronavirus Outbreak. For Millions, that’s Impossible.” Time, March 9.
• Mull, Amanda. 2020. “The Coronavirus Customer-Service Crisis When the public panics, service workers are the first to deal with it.” The Atlantic, March 13
• Wong, Julia Carrie. 2020. “Coronavirus divides tech workers into the ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ sick.” The Guardian, March 12.
• Gamio, Lazaro. 2020. “The workers who face the greatest coronavirus risk.” New York Times, March 15. [Interactive graphic showing jobs most at risk of exposure to infection, along with median salaries]

Authoritarianism

• COVID-19 Civic Freedom Tracker

Political economy, Capitalism, Neo-liberalism

• Adams, Vincanne. 2020. “Disasters and Capitalism...and COVID-19.” Somatosphere, March 26.
• Benton, Adia and Kim Yi Dionne. 2015. "International Political Economy and the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak." African Studies Review, 58 (1): 223-236.
• Gertz, Geoffrey. 2020. “The Coronavirus will reveal hidden vulnerabilities in global supply chains.” Brookings, March 5.
• Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. “Crime and Contagion: The impact of a pandemic on organized crime.” Online report, release March 26, 2020.
• Harvey, David. “Anti-Capitalist Politics in an Age of Covid-19.” Tribune, March 23 2020.
• Hirschfeld, Katherine 2020. “Microbial Insurgency: Theorizing Global Health for the Anthropocene.”  Anthropocene Review 7(1): 3-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019619882781
• Laterza, Vito and Louis Philippe Römer. “Coronavirus, herd immunity and the eugenics of the market.” Al Jazeera English, April 14 2020.
• Yong, Ed. “The New Coronavirus Is a Truly Modern Epidemic: New diseases are mirrors that reflect how a society works—and where it fails.” The Atlantic, February 3, 2020.

• Written early in the epidemic so some statistics about COVID-19 will be outdated, but makes interesting comparisons to previous pandemics (SARS, MERS, Ebola), and discusses ways in which contemporary realities (social media, technology, disinformation campaigns, xenophobia, etc.) shape responses to current pandemic.

Education (ed-tech and online teaching/learning, school closings, accessibility, etc.)

• Fischer, Karin. 2020. “With Coronavirus Keeping them in the US, International Students Face Uncertainty. So Do their Colleges.” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 6.
• Shapiro, Eliza. 2020. “Coronavirus in NYC: Why Closing Public Schools is a ‘Last Resort’”. New York Times, March 7.

• “New York City has the largest public school system in the United States, a vast district with about 750,000 children who are poor, including around 114,000 who are homeless. For such students, school may be the only place they can get three hot meals a day and medical care, and even wash their dirty laundry.”

• Watters, Audrey. Hack Education Weekly Newsletter (HEWN), No. 344.

• “‘This may be our moment,’ ed-tech folks exclaim, giddily sharing lists of their favorite digital learning tools (with little concern, it seems for questions of accessibility, privacy, or security) and tips for quickly moving ‘to the cloud.’”

• Perry, Andre M. “Hurricane Katrina provides lessons about closing campuses during the coronavirus outbreak.” Brookings, March 16, 2020.
• Calarco, Jessica. “Online learning will be hard for kids whose schools close – and the digital divide will make it even harder for some of them.” The Conversation, March 13 2020.

Activism, Mutual Aid, Solidarity

• Klinenberg, Eric. “We need social solidarity, not just social distancing.” New York Times, March 14, 2020.

News/Media

• Briggs, Charles. 2003. “Why nation states and journalists can’t teach people to be healthy: power and pragmatic miscalculation in public discourses on health.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 17(3): 287-321.
• Ewing, E. Thomas. “‘Kiss Via Kerchief’: Influenza Warnings In 1918.” Nursing Clio blog, posted February 12 2020.

Medical Conspiracy Theories & Resistance to Public Health Recommendations

• Video: Folklorist Andrea Kitta on COVID-19 Gossip, Rumor, Legend, and Conspiracy Theories 
• Briggs, Charles. 2004. “Theorizing modernity conspiratorially: Science, scale, and the political economy of public discourse in explanations of a cholera epidemic.” American Ethnologist 31 (2): 164-187.
• Nations and Monte. 1996. “I’m not a dog, no!”: Cries of resistance against cholera control campaigns. Social Science and Medicine 43(6): 1007-24.

Information and Misinformation

• Caulfield, Mike. Sifting Through the Outbreak: Information hygiene for the Covid-19 infodemic.”

• Website describing the SIFT strategy to critically evaluate sources of information

• “Misinformation related to the 2019-20 Coronavirus Pandemic” Wikipedia.

• Many examples of misinformation and efforts to counter them around the world.

• Oremus, Will. “The Simplest Way to Spot Coronavirus Misinformation on Social Media.” OneZero at Medium, March 4, 2020.

• Online article describing Mike Caulfield’s SIFT strategy, with some recent examples of misinformation about COVID-19.

• World Health Organization. “MythBusters”

• A website created to counter false claims about the virus

Other

• Chao, Sophie. 2020. “How COVID-19 makes us use our bodies differently.” The Familiar Strange, May 11.

Visualizations (Graphs, Charts, Illustrations, Maps)

• ADERSIM/York University: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Outbreak Timelapse [ARCGIS world map with time track of reported infections]
• Graphic illustrations: Weiman Kow, Comics for Good
• Johns Hopkins University. Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Global Cases “Dashboard.”
• NY Times: “How much worse the coronavirus could get, in charts.” [Interactive chart showing the potential effects of intervention strategies on peak infections and deaths]
• Our World In Data: Coronavirus Disease (COVID019) Research and Statistics. [using data from the WHO, presented visually in graphs
• COVID-19 #coronavirus Data Pack, from Information is Beautiful
• Social Distance Game, from Noko Time Tracking
• Why Outbreaks Like the Coronavirus Spread Exponentially, and How to ‘Flatten the Curve,’ from the Washington Post/Harry Stevens.

Games (video and board)

• see Video games about viruses and epidemics for list
• Pandemic (2008), a cooperative board game in which the players have to discover the cures for four diseases that break out at the same time.
• Plague Inc. (2012), a smartphone game from Ndemic Creations, where the goal is to kill off the human race with a plague. (from wikipedia).

• These can be useful to pose the question of how epidemics are imagined, what social, cultural, economic assumptions/models are built in, and how they compare with what is happening now.
• See this essay by Carli Velocci on Plague Inc and Ebola
• And this account of plague games in China.

Films/Videos

• Killer Bug - SARS Coronavirus

• BBC Horizon special from 2003 about the original SARS outbreak

• A Short History of Humans and Germs, NPR Goats and Soda

• 3 short animated videos from NPR on the origins of disease, and how human responses have changed throughout human history.

• How the World is Reacting to Coronavirus, New York Times News, March 13 2020.

• An interesting visual collage that illustrates how people around the world react in different ways to common challenges (isolation, death, fear, etc.)

• How to Survive a Plague, David France, director, 2017

• Using archival footage and contemporary interviews, this documentary traces the history of AIDS activism and the organizations ACT-UP and TAG from the beginning of the epidemic in the early 1980s through the development of effective treatments in the mid-1990s.
• Interview with the film-maker about lessons from the history of HIV activism for COVID-19.

• Rx for Survival: a global health challenge. 2005.  PBS/Nova

• Available as a 6-part series or single 2 hour special.
• Companion website has many resources, including further reading and class activities. Could provide good background to some of the underlying health issues and infrastructures that countries were dealing with prior to the current pandemic.

• Spillover: Zika, Ebola, and Beyond. 2016. PBS

• From the film website, “Over the last half century, the number of spillover diseases has increased rapidly. What's behind the rise in spillover viruses? What can we do to stop them? And what have we learned from the ultimate containment of Ebola?”
• Companion website has a film guide and 3D virus models

• Unnatural Causes: is inequality making us sick? 2008. California Newsreel.

• A film series that explores social inequities to lead to poor health outcomes.         
• Companion website has film clips, additional readings, and class activities.

• The Fight Against Viruses

• A collection of TED talks related to viruses, pandemics, and vaccines

Podcasts and Audio Resources

• Coronavirus: Fact vs. Fiction (series) Hosted by Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent.
• “Infectious Diseases Show Societies Who They Really Are.” (segment of episode) On the Media podcast, “Our Bodies, Our Selves” episode, March 6 2020. (Audio and transcript available online).

• Features an interview with Frank M. Snowden is a professor emeritus of the history of medicine at Yale and author of Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present.

• “Medicine for the Economy.” (episode). Planet Money podcast, March 13 2020.
• “When Xenophobia Spreads Like A Virus.” (episode) Code Switch podcast, March 4 2020. (Audio and full transcript available).
• “A History of Quarantine, from the Black Death to Typhoid Mary”. (4 minutes) NPR, All Things Considered; October 27, 2014. (Audio and transcript available)
• “The Most Horrible Seaside Vacation.” (episode segment, 16 minutes) WNYC RadioLab podcast, November 14 2011. (Audio and full transcript available)

• Discusses “Typhoid Mary” and the controversies around quarantine and healthy carriers.

• Podcast interview with Andrea Kitta, author of The Kiss of Death: Contagion and Contamination in Folklore.
• Sociocast Podcast https://sociocast.org/podcast/covid19-how-society-will-change/
• PBS News Hour Special Podcast Understanding Corona Virus a Special Episode March 19th 
• NPR Corona Virus Daily Podcast 
• “An Unfinished Lesson.” (episode). Hidden Brain, NPR, March 23, 2020. 49 minutes.

• Discussion with Nancy Bristow, author of “American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds Of The 1918 Influenza Epidemic” about the 1918-1920 flu pandemic.

Additional Resources

General resources

• Society for Medical Anthropology Special Interest Group: ARHE: Anthropological Responses to Health Emergencies

Other Covid-19 Syllabus projects

• Humanities Coronavirus Syllabus, edited by Sari Altschuler and Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Department of English, Northeastern University
• #coronavirussyllabus, open access (initiated by Alondra Nelson)
• A COVID-19 Syllabus, primary editor Kimberly Poitevin, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Salem State University
• COVID-19 Reader Project, primary editor Yeonsil Kang, Department of History, Drexel University; includes a particular focus on learning from past epidemics and links to some great digital archives
• #COVID19 Decarcerate Syllabus: A Political Education Resource; curated by California Coalition for Women Prisoners
• #coronavirussyllabusK12
• Teaching Coronavirus: Sociological Syllabus Project (primary editor Siri Colom)
• Imperial College London MOOC  Let's talk about COVID 
• COVID-19 Resources for Folklorists, Center for Folklore Studies, OSU

Guest-lecture exchanges

• Anthropology guest-lecture exchange (organized by Bonnie Kaiser). Sign up on this spreadsheet if you are able to guest-lecture remotely for a colleague who is ill, quarantined, or care-giving.
• Global health guest-lecture exchange (organized by Bonnie Kaiser). Sign up on this spreadsheet if you are able to guest-lecture remotely for a colleague who is ill, quarantined, or care-giving.

Resources for teaching continuity/remote teaching

• SACC Online Course Conversion Resources
• Twitter thread from Lance Gravlee with advice and resources: https://twitter.com/lancegravlee/status/1237429150123622400
• Miller, Michelle. “Going online in a hurry: what to do and where to start”. Chronicle of Higher Education.
• Russell, Whitney. “Teaching with digital technology: online classes.” Cultural Anthropology: Teaching Tools.
• Hamraie, Aimi. “Accessible teaching in the time of COVID-19”
• Crowdsourcing teaching online with care
• Resources for remote delivery/online teaching on the fly
• AAA webinar: COVID-19: Response Teaching and Learning in Anthropology; Part 1 and Part 2; Notes page
• Anthrodendum, Collective Anthro Mini-Lectures Program for #COVIDCampus

Resources for students

• COVID-19 Resources

Contributors (add your name and affiliation here)

• Nina Brown
• Katie Nelson, Inver Hills Community College
• Angela Jenks, University of California Irvine
• Bernardo Moreno
• Yeonsil Kang, Drexel University
• Laura Tilghman, Plymouth State University
• Jonah Rubin, Knox College
• Dada Docot, Purdue University
• Liliana Olivares
• Lance Gravlee
• Fields Harrington
• DurgaPrasad Karnam
• Martine Lappe
• Pedro Gutierrez Guevara
• Andrea Kitta
• Burcu Baykurt
• James Edwin
• Alex Golub
• Pableo Cardenas Ramirez
• Christine Wenc
• Tara Cepon Robins, University of Colorado Colorado Springs
• Thurka Sangaramoorthy
• Katherine Darling, University of Maine Augusta
• Joe Dumit, UC Davis
• Ishan Santra, HBCSE-TIFR, India
• Katherine Hirschfeld University of Oklahoma
• Paul Brodwin
• Julia Hanebrink
• Elena Burgos Martinez, Leiden University (Netherlands)
• Louis Philippe Römer, Vassar College
• Merrill Singer
• Doc Billingsley
• Amanda Mabe