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Viewing COVID through Cultural Studies

I am interested in connecting some of the concepts from the reading to the current social reality of the COVID pandemic:

1) How can we apply the idea of the isolated expert and the need to disrupt disciplinary thinking to the current wave of anti-intellectualism facing all of the various disciplines/ professions within our society and culture (think: physical health, mental health, education, law enforcement, etc.)?

As a high school teacher, this pandemic (and the social response to it) has given me a particular sense of existential dread, so my second question is more specific to my own work in secondary classrooms:

2) What role do educators, who are typically burdened with "healing" the woes facing society, play in addressing the resistance to any sort of meaningful cultural critique (See: recently proposed legislation banning curriculum in Iowa--House File 222--or the legislation seeking to ban language in Wisconsin schools)?

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