ABOUT

COVIDCalls is a public history and disaster science project currently underway in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The goal of the project is to amplify expert voices and spread awareness of every aspect of the pandemic—creating a rich
historical archive of use to anyone who wishes to learn deeply from this preventable disaster.

COVIDCalls engages historians and other humanities/social science researchers, alongside natural and physical scientists, public health experts, journalists, and artists to translate what are often esoteric research findings into understandable, useful lessons for a broad audience. In this public history mode, COVIDCalls seeks to provide viewers and listeners with information, and inspire greater curiosity into the structural issues made apparent by the pandemic, and disasters more generally.

COVIDCalls is a live discussion hosted by disaster historian Scott Gabriel Knowles (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). On the day COVIDCalls started, March 16, 2020, according to the JHU Coronavirus Resource Center there were globally 181,328 cases and 7,180 deaths from COVID-19. There were 88 deaths in the USA. By the time of the 100th episode on August 7, 160,702 people in the United States had died of COVID-19. The remarkable speed with which this disaster has unfolded demands rapid response from researchers, combined with thoughtful reflection, and a strategy to communicate humanities/social science research. COVIDCalls works in these domains.

One of the challenges we have is simply in the way that the public discussion of disasters is constructed in the media. Death counts are too simplistic. Complicated policy discussions become partisan shout-fests. History is absent, and expert voices are crammed into sound bites. Disasters are too frequently described as external events–they happen to us, the temporality is linear and brief, we recover from them—with very brief background and limited exploration of deeper social structures and disaster impacts. It is much more the case—and we are seeing this with COVID-19—that a disaster is the result of a great number of interconnected processes. Disasters don’t come to us from the outside, but they reveal the society we have. We don’t recover back to some previous whole, the disaster becomes part of us, woven into the fabric of our lives in our memories, our psychology, our laws, and our science.

Disaster researchers and other guests on COVIDCalls bring out of obscurity the historical links among decisions made to protect some, and not others—to privilege some health and not that of others across history. Disaster researchers in this public venue also suggest ways to keep those linkages right in front of us, and even suggest tools of analysis, care, and policy to keep the truth of disaster inequality right in front of us, through the present and the future of this pandemic, and beyond. In doing so COVIDCalls is also forming a historical record of the pandemic—transcripts now run to millions
of words, all available in this archive.

This About text is adapted from: Knowles, Scott Gabriel and Stanton, Bucky, History in the Making: COVIDCalls and the COVID-19 Pandemic, History Now 58 (Fall 2020).

Please explore the site, watch the discussions and read the transcripts, teach with it, build on it, and share what you learn.
Thank you.

COVIDCalls Program
Information

Please join COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Currently airing live every Monday-Thursday at 6pm Eastern Time.

What IS COVIDCalls?

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/08/15/scott-gabriel-knowles-covid-calls/

Please spread the word about #covidcalls, and send questions to host Scott Gabriel Knowles

SEND QUESTIONS

Scott Gabriel Knowles

Professor in the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy at KAIST, and an expert on disasters

Guest Hosts

Adia Benton

Felicia Henry

Kristin Urquiza

is a graduate of Yale University and the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley where she earned a Master of Public Affairs. She is an economic, social, and environmental justice advocate and co-founder of Marked By COVID. Her activism is powered by both expertise and lived experience and is a direct response to the heartache she has endured by the broken promises of this country. She is a rebel whose goal for her life is to be a good ancestor for her Latine community. She can be followed on Twitter @kdurquiza and @MarkedByCOVID.

PS: Marked By COVID is a national, grassroots-powered nonprofit that promotes accountability, recognition, justice, and a pandemic-free future by elevating truth and science. Sign up now for updates and opportunities to take action.

Kim Fortun

Jacob Steere-Williams

is a historian of epidemic disease and public health, an Associate Professor at the College of Charleston, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is the author of the 2020 book The Filth Disease: Typhoid Fever and the Practices of Epidemiology in Victorian England (University of Rochester Press), and the Associate Editor of the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.

Our Team

Eleanor Mayes

is completing a Master of Design at the University of California, Berkeley. She is interested in accessibility, sustainability, and fostering equity within design and engineering. She manages the transcription of COVIDCalls, and assists with the roll-out of the COVIDCalls archive and website.

Shivani Patel

is an undergraduate student at Drexel University studying Finance and Economics. Her COVID-Calls journey began in July 2020 assisting Dr. Knowles as STAR Scholar, and has since been helping with guest outreach and invitations.

Hyunah Keum

is a master’s student at the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy, in Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. She is interested in the materiality of plastic waste, and different practices to regulate or promote the use of plastic from the perspective of slow disaster. She wants to expand her area of research into revealing unequal relationships around waste, and its impacts on different beings, humans and non-humans.

N. Bucky Stanton

is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His dissertation investigates natural and cultural resource extraction in the central Peloponnese of Greece, exploring the history and politics of archaeology, energy and modernity in contemporary Greece and beyond. He is also social media manager and Early Career Representative for the Society for the History of Technology and produces the daily podcast COVIDCalls. Contact him about COVIDCalls episode ideas and other topics at buckystanton@gmail.com or stantn2@rpi.edu. To find his C.V. and links to written work, check out his website http://denizens.blog/ (under construction).

Nicole Lee Schroeder

Ph.D., is a historian of disability, medicine, and early American welfare systems. She joined the transcription team at COVIDCalls for the 2021 summer and had the privilege of listening in depth to numerous scholars, activists, and students as they conveyed their experiences and expertise regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kevin Ritter

is an urban planner, writer, and researcher in Brooklyn, New York. His writing has appeared in Hyperallergic, the London School of Economics Book Review, the Gotham Center blog, and Hunter College’s Urban Review, where he served on the editorial board. He currently works as the technical producer for Common Field.

Leanne Loo

(she/her) studies Anthropology; Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies; and Public Health at Tufts University. She is broadly interested in how power operates with specific attention to imperializing narratives of disease and contagion.

ABOUT

Please explore the site, watch the discussions and read the transcripts, teach with it, build on it, and share what you learn.
Thank you.

COVIDCalls Program
Information