Corona Conversations: A Year of Plague & Protests
CUNY FORUM Volume 8:1 (2020)
An Online International Edition
Purchase Print Edition: CUNY FORUM 8:1
Each month in May, June, July, and August 2020, CUNY FORUM will feature essays; analysis; literary, graphic, and poetic responses; conversations and community resources around the global COVID-19 pandemic and the linked Black Lives Matter protests from comparative Asian American and international Asian perspectives. Contributing writers hail from, or originate in the U.S., Peoples Republic of China, Taiwan, Myanmar, Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Macao, the EU, etc.
CUNY FORUM © 2020 by the Asian American / Asian Research Institute, The City University of New York
Individual essays are copyrighted by the authors who grant permission to CUNY FORUM to publish their work.
Header Photo: Doyers Street, Manhattan Chinatown, during stay-at-home orders (March 26, 2020)
Photo by Antony Wong
“The human world is not yet born above the body.
Though our bodies are upright our spirits are still curled–or in chaos.”
– Jean Toomer (1894-1967), American poet/novelist of Cane, Harlem Renaissance writer, and
attendee of the University of Chicago, New York University & The City College of New York
February 2021 Features
July/August 2020 Features
Poster by Tomie Arai
“We must continue to write, to witness, and to move towards equilibrium based upon sustainability, equanimity, and equality. Towards rebalancing breath, biology, and broken
human rights, these writings are a small step.“
– Russell C. Leong, CUNY FORUM editor
June 2020 Features
Photos by Tom Nakanishi (Top) & Antony Wong (Bottom)
May 2020 Features
Photo by Antony Wong
Topics
BIOLOGY ACROSS BORDERS
- Three Level Virus: Biological, Media, and Nations across Borders
- COVID-19 in the context of SARS, MERS, AIDS, Ebola, etc.
XENOPHOBIA: POLITICAL AND RACIAL VIRUSES
- Mass Media /Social Media’s Response & Racism Re: Chinese and Chinese Americans
- Pandemics and Asian and Western Literature
GLOBALISM: ENVIRONMENTAL, ECONOMIC & COMMUNITY ISSUES
- Tackling Globalism and Environmental Issues Through the Lens of the Coronavirus
- Nature’s revenge and/or Nature’s healing for man’s encroachment and exploitation of land, water, air, and wild animals and habits.
- Impacts upon the Chinese and Chinatown Communities (Socio-Cultural-Economic)
FRONTLINE & ON THE LINE
- Personal accounts, literary accounts, graphics and photo images by those working on the frontlines of medical care, research, reportage, or as critical observers
- Comparative Asian and Asian American Perspectives: Identities “on the line” of fire.
- Healing, Spiritual, and alternative perspectives on the pandemic
- Closed and Open Borders, the Role of AI in organizing democratic and authoritarian Societies in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
Join our East-West Conversation!
Above are but some of the areas in which Asians and Asian Americans have been impacted, and figure in the epidemiology and interpretation of our current global health crisis. Please contact Russell Leong (Editor-in-Chief) or Antony Wong (Assistant Publisher) via email of your possible interest in being a part of this special online edition (May to July 2020) and print publication (Fall 2020).
About CUNY FORUM
The purpose of CUNY FORUM is to provide an open space and a public commons for dialogue, debate and divergence from the status quo. The FORUM seeks to create a fresh approach to Asian American scholarship: inclusive of new constituencies, comparative theories and ideas, while inviting writing that seeks to transform a society still polarized by its class, gender, race, and belief-based systems.
For more information on CUNY FORUM including our most recent special volume, guest edited by Stephen Lee and Elizabeth Hanna Rubio, on immigration and being Asian Pacific Islander and undocumented, please visit www.aaari.info/cunyforum.
CUNY FORUM Staff
Editor-in-Chief
Russell C. Leong
Publisher
Joyce O. Moy
Executive Director, Asian American and Asian Research Institute – CUNY
Assistant Publisher
Antony Wong
Program Coordinator, Asian American and Asian Research Institute – CUNY
Journal Design
William Tam & Antony Wong
Information Technology
Zhu-hui Wu
EDITORIAL BOARD (2020)
Moustafa Bayoumi
Professor of English, Brooklyn College/CUNY
Luis H. Francia
Professor of Asian American Studies, Hunter College/CUNY, New York University & University of Hong Kong
Evelyn Hu-Dehart
Professor of History, American Studies and Ethnic Studies, Brown University
Kenneth Guest
Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Baruch College/CUNY
Peter Kiang
Professor and Director, Asian American Studies Program, University of Massachusetts Boston
Nadia Y. Kim
Professor of Sociology, Loyola Marymount University
Amitava Kumar
Professor and Helen D. Lockwood Chair of English, Vassar College
Kyoo Lee
Professor of Philosophy, John Jay College/CUNY & CUNY Graduate Center
Vinay Lal
Professor of History and Asian American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
Vivian Louie
Professor of Urban Policy & Planning and Director of the Asian American Studies Center & Program, Hunter College/CUNY
Phil Tajitsu Nash
Lecturer, Asian American Studies Program, University of Maryland
Betty Lee Sung
Professor Emerita, City College of New York/CUNY
John Kuo Wei Tchen
Professor and Director, Clement A. Price Institute, Rutgers University
David K. Yoo
Professor and Vice Provost, Institute of American Cultures, University of California, Los Angeles
Contact
Russell Leong
Editor-in-Chief
CUNY FORUM
rleong [at] aasc.ucla.edu
Antony Wong
Assistant Publisher
CUNY FORUM
awong [at] aaari. info