Paradoxes of Disconnected Connection

ABSTRACT

Normal academic life is a series of gatherings. The COVID-19 outbreak in spring of 2020 disrupted these gatherings and constituted not just a health crisis but also a profound alteration of academic life. Social distancing and quarantine accelerated historic processes of distanciation, as an increasing number of social situations were lifted out of the places in which they would have occurred. Teaching, learning, mentoring, and collaborating continued to “take place” but these newly mediated connections included experiences of disconnection. Auto-ethnography conducted by six academics at various levels during the COVID pandemic explores questions of space, place, pedagogy, and scholarship, comparing and contrasting our varied vantage points on transformations of spatial routines, the learning process, the academic community, and our lives. We show how disconnected connection was experienced differently, by differently-situated social actors, each of whom appropriated certain media according to his or her wants and needs. © Oxford University Press 2021.