Description:
This anthropological study explores the beliefs and practices that emerged around masking in the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Review Quotes:
"Only two years after the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic, Urmila Mohan produces a compelling account of the emotional, religious and subjective implications of this event. She investigates facial masks as micro-technologies of the self, revealing their imaginary dimension in sewing and making do geared to care, labor, religious practice, activism, loss, intimacy, boundaries. Bodies and materials in motion provide the rationale for a rich and striking iconography, expanding the scope of description and analysis of a crisis that is still unfolding."
Jean-Pierre Warnier, Professor of Anthropology (retired), University Paris-Descartes, France
"In this well written and exquisitely illustrated book on masks in motion, Urmila Mohan offers fascinating layers of insights into how people sew and use masks, and how the imperative to mask under the COVID-19 pandemic unmasked a myriad of vulnerabilities, tensions and cracks in the delicate and sensitive body of American society and politics."
Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cape Town, South Africa