COVID-19 isn't simply a viral pathogen nor is it, strictly speaking, the trigger of a global pandemic. Since the outbreak began in late-2019, an outpouring of clinical and scientific research, together with an array of public health initiatives, has sought to understand, mitigate, or even eradicate the virus. This book represents a snapshot of critical responses by researchers from 10 countries and 4 continents, in a collective effort to explore how Cultural Studies can contribute to our struggle to persevere in a "no normal" horizon, with no clear end in sight. Together, the essays address important questions at the intersection of culture, power, politics, and public health: What are the possible outlines for the panic-pandemic complex? How has the pandemic been endowed with meanings and affective registers, often at the tipping points where existing social relations and medical understanding were being rapidly displaced by new ones? How can societies discover ways of living with, through, and against COVID that do not simply reproduce existing hierarchies and power relations? The 30 essays comprising this collection, along with the editors' introduction, explore the formative period of the COVID pandemic, from mid-2020 to mid-2021. They are grouped into three sections - 'Racializations,' 'Media, Data, and Fragments of the Popular,' and 'Un/knowing the Pandemic' - themes that animate, but do not exhaust, the complex cultural and political life of COVID-19 with respect to identity, technology, and epistemology. No doubt, readers will chart their own pathway as the pandemic continues to rage on, based on their own unique circumstances. This book provides critical-intellectual guideposts for the way forward - toward an uncertain future, without guarantees. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Cultural Studies.

This book, stemming from an international conference, mainly explores the "private sphere" of minority cultures. To date, insufficient attention has been paid to ethnic minorities' sense of subjecthood, e.g. their construction and articulation of self-understanding formed through lived experiences, sensibilities, emotions, sentiments, empathy, and even tempers and moods. Social misunderstanding, not to mention stereotyping, mystification and discrimination, often stems from neglecting the surprising and enlivening texture of minorities' emotional world. Taking the important cue of the "affective turn" in cultural theory in recent years, the contributors address questions such as: what are the representations of affective/emotional energies and intensities surrounding the ethnic figures/strangers in visual culture (e.g. passivity, shame, anger, joy, empathy, charm, belonging, etc.)?; how do ethnic minorities respond to these visual narratives, and how can their self-representation through visual discourse reveal and transform their lived experiences?

At a time of global uncertainties and erosion of liberties, how will cultural studies clear a space for a parallel intellectual and political engagement with human rights practice? How will human rights thinking be liberated from its doctrinal approach to ethics and legal justice? This book forges an alliance between cultural studies and human rights scholarships, to help us better understand the changing and complex political context that continuously shapes contemporary violence. To date, interdisciplinary dialogue or institutional collaboration remains rare across the two domains, resulting in critical interpretive work appearing too vacuous at times and institutional legal work often trapped in doctrinalism. By opening a door for a new and engaging scholarship, this book will re-ignite debates and passions within communication and critical cultural studies in the search for global justice.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies.

At a time of global uncertainties and erosion of liberties, how will cultural studies clear a space for a parallel intellectual and political engagement with human rights practice? How will human rights thinking be liberated from its doctrinal approach to ethics and legal justice? This book forges an alliance between cultural studies and human rights scholarships, to help us better understand the changing and complex political context that continuously shapes contemporary violence. To date, interdisciplinary dialogue or institutional collaboration remains rare across the two domains, resulting in critical interpretive work appearing too vacuous at times and institutional legal work often trapped in doctrinalism. By opening a door for a new and engaging scholarship, this book will re-ignite debates and passions within communication and critical cultural studies in the search for global justice.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies.

This book, stemming from an international conference, mainly explores the "private sphere" of minority cultures. To date, insufficient attention has been paid to ethnic minorities' sense of subjecthood, e.g. their construction and articulation of self-understanding formed through lived experiences, sensibilities, emotions, sentiments, empathy, and even tempers and moods. Social misunderstanding, not to mention stereotyping, mystification and discrimination, often stems from neglecting the surprising and enlivening texture of minorities' emotional world. Taking the important cue of the "affective turn" in cultural theory in recent years, the contributors address questions such as: what are the representations of affective/emotional energies and intensities surrounding the ethnic figures/strangers in visual culture (e.g. passivity, shame, anger, joy, empathy, charm, belonging, etc.)?; how do ethnic minorities respond to these visual narratives, and how can their self-representation through visual discourse reveal and transform their lived experiences?