Spotlight
Eyes on COVID-19
Our latest Spotlight holds a collection of COVID-related articles.
If you would be interested in contributing articles or photographs, please contact June Carolyn Erlick, jerlick@fas.harvard.edu.
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May 2021 Articles
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The Covid-19 Crisis and Populism in Brazil
English + Português
As a researcher in the history of the relationship between law and slavery, I’ve observed the impacts that biological events can have on the course of national policies. As historians like Sidney Chalhoub and Tana Hogarth have pointed out, yellow fever epidemics not only helped…
Gaming, Mexico and the Impact of Covid-19
English + Español
Covid-19, as we all know, has affected the world in surprising ways. It sent the gaming industry worldwide skyrocketing in 2020. It forced the hands of corporations to rethink their brick & mortar recruitment strategy, as the pandemic forced gamers worldwide to quarantine…
Order and Disorder in the Contemporary City
English + Español
As a rule, cities are my favorite place to reflect on identity and territory. But, what is identity in a situation in which architecture, history and even the garden are valued more than the landscape? I don’t have the answer, but I can only affirm that the more cities…
Media Solitude
English + Español
There is a family here. A family like any other, a family like no other, like all families: a blend of love and hate, of mixed, nuanced feelings; rocked by contradictions and conflicts. Family, this peculiar comunitarian structure, particularly problematic, even when emblematic…
Warped Time
Collective isolation is a centrifugal force: as we spin around the axis of public health and growing public fear, we are crushed against our inner walls, which separate us from anyone on the other side. In Santiago, while we quarantined between May and September, we…
Without Hurrying, but without Pausing
English + Español
A specter has begun to float around the world: a new social pact. This notion-proposal is just about everywhere at global forums, common sense among politicians on both the right and left and constantly present in the international press. And this seems normal…
Researching Architecture Without Leaving Home
2020 was the beginning of my master’s degree studies. At the end of 2019 I found out that I was accepted into the at the University of São Paulo master’s in history and
The Luxury of Social Isolation
The Covid-19 pandemic swept through Paraisópolis, one of the biggest favelas in São Paulo, Brazil, a place with one of the worst Human Index scores in the country—that includes measures of poverty, health, education, welfare and access to public services…
Reflecting on Covid-19: Seven Sundays
English + Español
We always have lived with the constant tic tac of a global rhythm, like if we are in a military training where there is no place for rest and need to be more efficient and productive each day. Everybody should have high performance in all aspects of life, more degrees, courses…
Peri Alto, a Suburban Pandemic
The Peri Alto favela, in the northern suburbs of São Paulo, reflects the structure of the Brazilian society. At the top of the mountain there are the most solid houses, built in the 70s, when from the northeast of Brazil people emigrated to São Paulo in search of fortune. From the…
The Literate Universe and the Pandemic
English + Español
When my father tested positive for Covid-19 we became a worried, and lost, family. We didn’t know how he had become infected or what we could do to help him…
Reflecting on the Work of Emi Takahashi
Emi Takahashi’s work presents at this very troubled moment in our society are not the outcome of chance, but of a journey of great dedication and perseverance. Escaping the clichés of the contemporary world and the immediate and flat images of social media has proved…
My Three Hundred Eighty Eight Thousand Eight Hundred (and counting) Minutes in Ni modo-covid-19 Mood
Paraphrasing the play RENT´s great question: “How do you measure a year? “Not any year, this year when more than a million have already succumbed to Covid-19, and the tally is rising. How do you measure a year when the acute fall in economic activity and trade —the largest…
El jardín pandémico
English + Español
Imagine the tranquility of a garden. With the aroma of flowers mixed in with the buzzing of bees and the contrast of shady trees against the fierce Paraguayan sun. From the intimacy of a family garden in which daily ritual leads one to water the plants, gather up the dry leaves…
The Days and the Neighbors I Didn’t Know I Had
English + Español
Now there is time to sit and watch. Life becomes contemplation of the landscape of the windows, the waiting and the observation arereleased, because the time is presented in a strange way. Daily rituals that remained invisible and that are now part of our stories and…
The Pandemic in Venezuela
Latin America is the world’s epicenter of Covid-19, with more than 10 million cases and 400,000 deaths as of November 1. The region’s countries have nine of the world’s 16 highest mortality rates per 100,000, with Peru claiming the dubious distinction of the highest rate after…
Image, Pandemic, Return: the Drama of Venezuelan Migrants
English + Español
Two girls look at each other intently, they are standing up and their raised hands move to a song to clap along that makes their afternoon happy. An expression of joy can be seen in both, though one has half her face covered by a face mask. The space they occupy, the moment…
Afrodescendants and Covid-19
English + Español
As an Afro-descendant Chilean who is also an activist in my community, I am constantly struck by our exclusion from the conversation about the impact of Covid-19. We know for a fact that the pandemic affects the most vulnerable members of the society. Afro-descendants are…
A Look at Mexico City
English + Español
I live in a city of twenty million people. A city usually filled with cars and people that one day became empty. Sidewalks, parks, and other spaces are now abandoned, without any figures, not even passing shadows. This was once unimaginable. But the city I was born …
Living in The Covid Years
In August 2020, thousands paraded in classic cars and lowriders in East Los Angeles, as Chicanas and Chicanos celebrated the 50th anniversary of the National Chicano Moratorium to remember when 30,000 marched in peaceful protest to question the overrepresentation…
Pandemic and Crisis
English + Español
The Covid-19 pandemic is without a doubt a universal phenomenon, not only because of its geographic extension, but perhaps even more important, because of the way it permeates absolutely every aspect of our societies. It’s not enough to just understand the…
The Covid-19 Pandemic and a Deep Dive into My Emotional World
English + Español
The COVID-19 pandemic came in a year that I predicted would be emotive. Actually, the first two months were quite thrilling. In February I celebrated my wedding in a magical country house in the Colombian Coffee region, where we danced and celebrated with…
Reflecting on the Work of Rodrigo Abd
English + Español
Peru’s capital is a notoriously gray, solemn city. Limeños can go weeks without seeing the sun, catching just a pale glimpse of its radiance behind the clouds. As the coronavirus pandemic wreaks havoc here, Lima’s overcast disposition seems to match the…
Teaching University Students in Chile’s Pandemic
English + Español
As a law professor, I’ve seen in the last few months how the capacity for innovation in the university system has not previously been appreciated. I’ve also observed a positive impact in teaching that has forced us to evaluate practices and to have increasing concern…
My Time
English + Español
A few days before the mandatory quarantine was declared in Chile, I thought it was best to leave Santiago. We knew the situation was very serious, but we did not know how the pandemic would actually be experienced. I know how to live with an earthquake; as a historian, I…
The Pretension of Total Power in the Age of Covid-19
English + Español
Next year, presidential elections are scheduled to be held in Nicaragua, and a new National Assembly would assume office. The good faith of the regime of Daniel Ortega, if such a thing existed, should already be demonstrating, in a race against the clock in this time of Covid-19…
Caught between the Pandemic and Scientific Inequity in Colombia
English + Español
We were a small troop of innocence, a generation of children who only thought of smiling, waking up to the noise of frogs, crickets, roosters, and enjoying those beautiful sunsets offered by the charming Colombian…
Guatemala: Slow-Motion Collapse
English + Español
Guatemala is in the middle of the Pacific Ring of Fire; a country the size of Tennessee, it is threatened by four tectonic plates and has almost 300 volcanos. Here, we have all grown up with tremors, and some of us remember the last “great” earthquake: that of 1976, which…
Mourning in the Time of Covid
Dery Dyer, the former owner, publisher and editor of The Tico Times, a newspaper in Costa Rica, known as a champion of free and independent press, died of lung cancer in her home in a suburb of that nation’s capital of San José Friday Sept.25, said her husband…
Horror of Horrors
English + Español
The keychain he gave me was a bit odd with its two decorations: the dried tail of a rabbit or some other creature and a plastic heart that read, “I Love NY.” I took the keys, thanked him for his generosity (especially considering that he thought the imminent threat of the…
Postcards from Confinement
English + Español
A few months ago, when the state of California issued a mandatory lockdown, many of us began to wonder what would become of our jobs and our projects. As a member of the faculty at the University of San Diego, I was able, and fortunate, to transition to online teaching relatively smoothly…
Resilience in the Time of Covid-19 in Puerto Rico
English + Español
In the past ten years, we Puerto Ricans have experienced many situations that have made us recipients of stress, anxiety and hypervigilance. The theme of Covid-19 goes hand in hand with other social problems. It is because of this that people live in a state of…
Villahermosa in times of Covid-19
English + Español
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, Harvard decided that for safety and health reasons, all students would have to take a 100% online curriculum at least for this semester. That meant that…