Author: Jordan Carswell

In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to the spread of not only a deadly virus, but also new conspiracy theories and confusion over evolving scientific advice about how to best protect oneself from the virus. At this moment, we face the intersection of both a global virus pandemic and an infodemic. 5G networks have been falsely linked to the spread of the virus (Ahmed et al., 2020). Others believe the virus is a hoax that is propelled by fear-mongering media (Relman, 2020). The CDC changed its guidance on the necessity of wearing masks to limit transmission…

The Power Academic Writing program was developed by me while working as a Writing and ESL Specialist in the Student Learning Centre, at Ontario Tech University’s Office of Student Life. It was one of my goals for the 2019-2020 school year, and I received feedback from the other two Writing Specialists with whom I worked and from our team manager throughout the development phase. It was launched in the Spring 2020 term and is expected to run every year in the Spring/Summer terms. In this post I will explain what the program is about, how and why it was conceived,…

Winder, Georgia is a small town northeast of Atlanta. It is a town with a racist history. It is also my home, the place where my dad is buried, where my brother got married, where my mom lives, where I go when I say, “I’m going home for the holidays.”  And as it did in virtually every US town, suburb, and city, Coronavirus came to town in the spring of 2020.  18 months BC (Before Coronavirus), my brother and I were faced with something no adult children ever want to face: our vivacious, obstinate, wonderful mother couldn’t live at home…

Among many tools used by humans to contain COVID-19, face masks have been the most important in China since the outbreak of this pandemic. COVID-19 has empowered face masks to take the form of an assemblage and agglomerate with other human and non-human assemblages.  Such assemblage rhetoric has changed the way we think, communicate, and organize our lives as face masks are coded into social rules and people’s daily lives and disclosing their eventfulness. The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused face masks to get entangled into larger assemblages beyond medical facilities, especially the power assemblage. On Feb 15th, 2020, the…