Masking in Pandemic U.S.

Urmila Mohan is an anthropologist of material culture and religion with a focus on bodily practices. She is associated with the Matière à Penser group, is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, University College London, UK, and is the founder/editor of the open-access digital journal The Jugaad Project. She has researched and theorized materiality, praxis, and aesthetics in diverse contexts including religious communities and maker groups in India, Indonesia, and the U.S.

"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

• Introduction: Imaginaries, embodiment and the U.S. Covidscape; 1 Practices of containment and connection; 2 Sewing cloth masks and making do with uncertainty; 3 Performing care and worldmaking; 4 Response-ability and transformation of religious subjects; 5 Conclusion: Imaginaries of masking and unmasking