Photo by: Emmy Numann
In May 2020, Rituals in the Making began with a simple but crucial question:
How do we mourn when we cannot gather?
As the pandemic stretched on our questions turned to controversies:
What constitutes expertise? Who decides and acts on it? What happens when narratives of the past don’t align? What’s the role of collective memory in a democracy?
DISPATCHES FROM THE FIELD
Dispatches from the field are how we keep you in the loop about our research. A dispatch can be a reflection, a briefing, an interview or a question emerging from our research encounters. Dispatches are ethnographic beginnings, sprouting seeds we are currently tending to and whose trajectory we are excited to share with you!
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Begun in May 2020, the Rituals in the Making project has developed over time and in response the pandemic’s shifting dynamics and its broader implications for American society.
PARTNERS IN ADVOCACY
Rituals in the Making has worked closely with organizations and initiatives related to COVID mourning, remembrance, and activism for several years. Learn more here about some of our longest-standing collaborators.
IN AMERICA: REMEMBER
Since November 2020, the Rituals in the Making research team has collaborated with Bethesda-based visual artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg on her public installations memorializing those who have died of COVID-19.