Performing Identity in the Era of COVID-19

Lauren O’Mahony (PhD, FHEA) is Senior Lecturer in Communications at Murdoch University, Western Australia. Her research focuses on Australian women’s literature as well as media analysis, media audiences, and creativity. Her research has been published in numerous high-quality journals and edited books. Rahul K. Gairola (PhD, Asia Research Centre Fellow) is The Krishna Somers Senior Lecturer in English and Postcolonial Literature at Murdoch University, Western Australia. He has internationally presented and published in reputable research forums for many years. He is Editor of the Routledge/Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) South Asian Book Series, and Area Editor for Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory. Melissa Merchant (PhD, SFHEA) is Academic Chair of English and Creative Arts at Murdoch University, Western Australia. Her recent research focuses on contemporary performativity. She has contributed to Journal of Intercultural Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, The Seventeenth Century, and Outskirts, and a chapter in The Routledge Companion to Disability and the Media. Simon Order (M.Sc, PhD) is currently an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Murdoch University, Western Australia, who specialises in radio studies and music technology studies. His research has recently become more diverse with work focusing on post-apocalyptic television studies and universal design for online learning events and social mobility in Australia.

1. Introduction—Viral Stagings Across the Globe: Performing Identity in the Era of COVID-19 PART I ‘Acting Out’: Framing Language and Performance Today 2. Revisiting Manhattan Music in the Time of COVID-19: Body Politics, Anti-Asian Racism and Negotiation of Ethnic Identity 3. Reclaiming Everydayness and Japanese Cultural Routines in Animal Crossing: New Horizons 4. Muslim Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Western Sydney: Understanding the Role of Community-Specific Communication Infrastructure 5. Standing-Out and Fitting-In: The Acoustic-Space of Extemporised Speech PART II Enacting the Race, Gender, and Sexuality of COVID-19 6. Networks of Alterity in Syndemic Times: Sociodigital Media Controversy Around Racism in Mexico 7. Hope, Performative Diversity and Re-production: Hamilton and COVID-Era Politics 8. Enby in the Time of COVID-19: An Autoethnographic Reflection on Performing Non-binary Identity during Lockdown 9. Bodies of/at Work: How Women of Colour Experienced Their Workplaces and Have Been Expected to ‘Perform’ during the COVID-19 Pandemic PART III Pandemic Performing and the Digital Milieu 10. Egyptian Baladi, Australian Style in Lockdown: Seeking Connection 11. Zoom Face: Self-surveillance, Performance and Display 12. Viral Assemblages and Witnessing Extraordinary Times: Queer Patchworks of Intimacy, Precarity and Affect in an Indian City 13. Digital Literary Creative Practice and COVID-19 14. The Reshaping of Home, Privacy and Identity during a Pandemic. Afterword