Symposium Program

12:00 p.m. – 12:30 p.m. (CET)

Welcome and Opening Remarks
Heike Steinhoff & Rebecca Brückmann

12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (CET)

Global History, (Post-)Colonialism, and Pandemics

Panel Chair: Rebecca Brückmann, Ruhr-University Bochum

“…to care for these poor ones when they don’t understand.”
Smallpox, Indigenous Populations, and State Power in Late 18th Century New Spain
Martin Gabriel | University of Klagenfurt

Civilizing the Natives with Modern Medicine: Ideas and Strategies to Implement Public Hygiene in Japan-Ruled Taiwan (1895-1945)
Anke Scherer | Ruhr-University Bochum

Pandemics and Coloniality: From Chronicles of the Indies to Covid-19 Narratives
Romana Radlwimmer | University of Tübingen

2:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. (CET)

Break

2:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. (CET)

Memorial Culture and the Politics of Representation in Pandemics

Panel Chair: Dietmar Meinel, University Duisburg-Essen

Covid-19 and Holocaust Representations in Israeli Media and Social Media
Liat Steir-Livny | Sapir Academic College, The Open University, Israel

“Essentially” Expendable: The Biopolitics of Disability, Working in/through Pandemic, and Twitter as a Site of Resistance
Adrianna Michell | McMaster University

Pandemics, Public Art, and Memorials
Ingrid Gessner | Pädagogische Hochschule Vorarlberg

4:00 p.m. – 4:15 p.m. (CET)

Break

4:15 p.m. – 5:15 p.m. (CET)

(Re-)Reading Literature in Pandemics

Panel Chair: Lena Mattheis, University Duisburg-Essen

Reading in a Pandemic: Discovering the Current and Historic Influence of Literature
Emily Eaton (Co-Authors: Fiona P. McDonald and Sean Lawrence) | University of British Columbia

Surveillance State and Increased “Othering”: Reading José Saramago’s Blindness through the Lens of COVID-19 Pandemic
Simran Dhingra | Jamia Millia Islamia

5:15 p.m. – 5:45 p.m. (CET)

Break

5:45 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. (CET)

Re-Negotiating Discourses on HIV/AIDS during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Panel Chair: Rebecca Brückmann and Heike Steinhoff, Ruhr-University Bochum

COVID-19, Aids, and the Difference of Sexuality
Simon Dickel | Folkwang University Essen

The Incommensurability of Pandemics: Gay Men, COVID-19 and the Metaphoric Privatisation of the AIDS Crisis
Nikolaas Deketelaere | Catholic University of Paris

“The Great Work Begins”: Keeping the Memory of AIDS Alive During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Florian Zitzelsberger | University of Passau

HIV and AIDS Epidemic and Its Afterlives: Intersections with Zimbabwean Mobilities and Learning from the Margins
Roselyne Masamha | University of Hull
Lennon Mhishi | University of Liverpool

12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. (CET)

Mobilities, Migration, and Spatial Dynamics in Pandemics

Panel Chair: Chris Katzenberg, Ruhr-University Bochum

Borders and Othering at the Fringes of the EU in the Times of COVID-19 Pandemics
Marijana Hameršak | Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research
Marta Stojić Mitrović | The Institute of Ethnography SASA

The Viral Exclusion and Discrimination of Undocumented Migrants in Mexico during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Michela Venturi | University of Aalborg

Back to the Nature: COVID-19, Utopia and Socio-Spatial Dynamics in Brazil
Danielle Heberle Viegas | Munich Centre for Global History – LMU

1:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (CET)

Break

2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. (CET)

Constructing Bodies and Performing Identities in Pandemics

Panel Chair: Heike Steinhoff, Ruhr-University Bochum

Playing Fat? Digital (Sports) Gaming and Epidemic Imaginaries
Martin Lüthe | John-F.-Kennedy-Institute for North American Studies

“Sweet Support”: Donuts, COVID-15 and Anti-Fat Bias in Media Discourses
Evangelia Kindinger | Humboldt University of Berlin

We Against the Virus: Performing Masculinity in the Context of Covid-19
Silke Felber | University of Vienna

3:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. (CET)

Break

3:45 p.m. – 5:15 p.m. (CET)

Conspiracy Narratives and Processes of Othering in Pandemics

Panel Chair: Anna Bongers, Ruhr-University Bochum

The Noisome Pestilence: COVID 19 Spiritual Warfare and Conspiracy Theories
Abimbola A. Adelakun | University of Texas at Austin

Germs, Needles, and Conspiracy Theories
Martin Tschiggerl | University of Saarland

Othering the Other-than-Human: Bats, Contagion, and Vulnerable Populations
René Dietrich | University of Eichstätt

5:15 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. (CET)

Closing Remarks