Dissertation
Who’s sick of what?: belonging in pandemics, the pandemic of unbelonging
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Summer 2022
DOI: 10.25820/etd.006567
Abstract
This two-article dissertation explores and exploits the heterogeneity of the social world that becomes visible at times of crisis—in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic created a portal to study the dynamics of race and capitalism. In this dissertation, I conduct critical analyses of systems of oppression at the institutional level in article one and at the structural level in article two. In the first article, using critical qualitative research, particularly critical discourse analysis, I interrogate the ideological work of the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine when the University of Iowa communicated its public good purpose at a time of crisis. I find that the University of Iowa communicated its scientific and medical research to advance a vision of the world where the COVID-19 crisis will be overcome by science, facilitated by professionals trained at the school, and the knowledge delivered from the university to the outside world. I critique the ideological work of science and technology rhetoric and offer implications toward an engaged practice of world-making. In the second article, I employ situational analysis to understand how the University of Iowa contains the evolving situation of the COVID-19 pandemic and how modes of containment racialize social relations on the campus. I find that as the University of Iowa attempted to keep the campus community healthy, maintain its educational programs, and advance racial justice, it sought to contain the virus and opposing perspectives. Containment of the virus overlaps with an entangled process of racialization through cultural signification of what is healthy and what matters and structural reproduction through institutionalized racism. I discuss how these processes of containment and racialization shape who can belong at the university and offer implications for the political potentiality of belonging in higher education research and practice.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Who’s sick of what?: belonging in pandemics, the pandemic of unbelonging
- Creators
- Milad Mohebali
- Contributors
- Jodi L. Linley (Advisor)Sherry K. Watt (Committee Member)Leslie A. Locke (Committee Member)Duhita Mahatmya (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Educational Policy and Leadership Studies
- Date degree season
- Summer 2022
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.006567
- Number of pages
- xii, 169 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2022 Milad Mohebali
- Language
- English
- Description illustrations
- illustrations (some color)
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 123-169).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
Why do some people not feel they belong at various spaces, like universities? In this dissertation, I answer this question by analyzing how the University of Iowa (UI) creates modes of unbelonging. First, I investigate social media communications via the official UI Facebook page during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. My findings show that the UI communicated its public purpose to its stakeholders (students, faculty, alumni, communities outside of the university) by relying on a rhetoric of science, medicine, and technology. As the UI communicated its value to its stakeholders, it also advanced a vision of a world where science, technology, and healthcare will overcome the pandemic and keep everyone healthy. However, in these communications, it failed to discuss how science, technology, and healthcare intersect with institutionalized racism and capitalistic enterprises. In the second article, I further explain how the appeal of sciences to contain the COVID-19 virus operated to further racialize people who are cared and those who are not cared through various institutions. At the UI, faculty and students were asked to return to campus in conditions that put them in a position of vulnerability and risk—conditions that were only exacerbated for marginalized populations. Meanwhile, by attempting to clean the Old Capitol building of graffities spray-painted by protestors seeking racial justice, UI centers whiteness as the history—all that has been and will be. In this dissertation, I show that unbelonging is made by various structures that operate via institutions like UI. I conclude by explaining that creating a world where everyone belongs requires decolonization.
- Academic Unit
- Educational Policy and Leadership Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9984285347102771
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