Scholarly Work
- Nennmann, Avery, and Sarah E. Wagner, “The Pandemic’s Crisis of Trust: Workforce Sustainability among US Healthcare Professionals,” in Sustainability Case Studies, edited by Jenn da Rosa and Jana Kopelent-Rehak. Cambridge University Press (forthcoming).
- Greenwald, Martha, María José Peláez, and Sarah E. Wagner. “Locating Grief: Pandemic Memory, Mourning, and the Politics of Where.” In The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Death, edited by Sarah L. Richardson, Sarah E. Wagner, and Ruth E. Toulson. Cambridge University Press, 2026.
- Kuipers, Joel C., and Roy R. Grinker. “Sacred Pixels: Making Meaning in Zoom Funerals during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Chapter. In The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Death, edited by Sarah L. Richardson, Sarah E. Wagner, and Ruth E. Toulson, 483–99. Cambridge Handbooks in Anthropology. Cambridge University Press, 2026.
- Richardson, Sarah L., Sarah E. Wagner, and Ruth E. Toulson, eds. The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Death of Cambridge Handbooks in Anthropology. Cambridge University Press, 2026.
- Rituals in the Making Collective. “Terminated Effective Immediately: Studying the Refusal to Study Pandemic Loss.” Anthropology News, March 27, 2026.
- Vicente da Silva, Andreia and Sarah E. Wagner, “Ritualising and Memorialising Unjust Death: The Affective Force of COVID Loss in Brazil and the United States,” in Decolonising Death Studies, edited by Panagiotis Pentaris, Stacey Pitsillides, and Hajar Ghorbani. Routledge, 2026.
- Rituals in the Making Collective, “Case Study: ‘In America’ COVID Memorial Art Installation on the DC National Mall,” in Practicing Digital Ethnography, edited by Devin Proctor. Routledge, 2026.
- Frieman, Sarah, Paige Gavin, and Roy Richard Grinker. “The Challenges of Mourning: Nursing Homes Betwixt and Between during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Anthropological Quarterly 98, no. 1 (2025): 61-85. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/anq.2025.a957903.
- Santikarma, Ariel and Sarah E. Wagner, “De-exceptionalizing Pandemic Death: COVID-19’s Ambiguous and Layered Mourning,” Anthropological Quarterly 97(3) (2024): 557–78.
- Sarah Frieman, Paige Gavin, Maura Kelly-Yuoh, Sebastian Sirais, and Sarah E. Wagner, “Snapshots of Grief,” Anthropology News, May 8, 2023.
- Proctor, Devin and Tariq Adely, “Care by Emoji,” Anthropology News, June 23, 2021.
In the Media
Coverage of and by Rituals in the Making
Sarah E. Wagner and Martha Greenwald, “Americans Won’t Let COVID Be Erased from Our Memories,” LA Times, August 13, 2026.
Martha Greenwald, Sarah Wagner, “The worst ‘weave’ from Trump is lies about a pandemic that killed so many Americans,” Lexington Herald-Leader, November 1, 2024.
The COVID-19 public health emergency is over, but tales of loss remain. This website offers the bereaved a digital safe space | Ashley R. Williams | CNN | May 18, 2024.
Martha Greenwald, Sarah Wagner, “‘Are you better off today than four years ago?’ is the wrong question,” The Hill, April 6, 2024.
‘I will never be the same’: 4 years on, remembering the lives lost to COVID-19 | Eun Yang, News4 Anchor | NBC4 | March 11, 2024.
Four years on, the COVID-19 pandemic has a long tail of grief | Aimee Cunningham | Science News | March 11, 2024.
Martha Greenwald, “The Donna Summer song that helps get me through this silent grief,” Salon.com, May 20, 2023.
Martha Greenwald, Sarah Wagner, and Suzanne Firstenberg, “Our Pandemic Grief Has No Expiration Date,” LA Progressive, May 12, 2023.
A Lasting Legacy of Covid: Far-Right Platforms Spreading Health Myths | Sheryl Gay Stolberg | New York Times | November 22, 2022.
Why We Need a National Day of Remembrance for COVID Victims | Wagner, Sarah, Roy Richard Grinker, and Joel Kuipers | Los Angeles Times | June 10, 2022.
The Final Betrayal: Pandemic Grief | Ed Yong | Atlantic Monthly | April 13, 2022.
Covid-19 Memorial in D.C. Gives Americans a Place to Reconcile Their Loss | Vanessa G. Sánchez | Washington Post | September 29, 2021.
In Photos: COVID-19 Deaths Captured in Visual Installation | GW Today | September 28, 2021.
At least 610,000 white flags will stand in D.C. in honor of those who died from coronavirus. A Coloradan is among those behind it. | Jennifer Brown | Colorado Sun | July 26, 2021.
Make Time to Mourn | Katherine Cusumano | The New York Times | May 14, 2021.
“The health professional missing from Biden’s Covid advisers” | Opinion by Roy Richard Grinker ” | CNN.com | February 7, 2021.
‘I can’t believe she’s gone’: Pandemic restrictions, stressors compound grief process | Kali Venable | Victoria Advocate | December 26, 2020.
Funeral directors adapt to a new pandemic normal | Janet Moore | The Star Tribune | December 14, 2020.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced mourners to think of different ways to honor the dead and say goodbye | Angie Leventis Lourgos | The Chicago Tribune | December 2, 2020.
New Mourning: How COVID Is Altering the Way We Grieve | John DiConsiglio | GW Today | November 9, 2020.
Collaboration with In America, how could this happen…
Four years in, covid flags no longer fly. Families’ grief remains | Jenna Portnoy | Washington Post | March 16, 2024.
A Living Memorial to COVID Victims | Maryland Today | March 2, 2021.
In America: How could this happen… | Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg.
How this artist visualized the scale of human loss to COVID-19 | Maea Lenei Buhre | PBS News Hour | February 19, 2021.
Covid: ‘Each one of these people mattered’ | Hannah Long-Higgins and Chelsea Bailey | BBC News | February 20, 2021.
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