Scholars in COVID Times documents the new and innovative forms of scholarship, community collaboration, and teaching brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this volume, Melissa Castillo Planas and Debra A. Castillo bring together a diverse range of texts, from research-based studies to self-reflective essays, to reexamine what it means to be a publicly engaged scholar in the era of COVID.

Between social distancing, masking, and remote teaching—along with the devastating physical and emotional tolls on individuals and families—the disruption of COVID-19 in academia has given motivated scholars an opportunity (or necessitated them) to reconsider how they interact with and inspire students, conduct research, and continue collaborative projects. Addressing a broad range of factors, from anti-Asian racism to pedagogies of resilience and escapism, digital pen pals to international performance, the essays are connected by a flexible, creative approach to community engagement as a core aspect of research and teaching. Timely and urgent, but with long-term implications and applications, Scholars in COVID Times offers a heterogeneous vision of scholarly and pedagogical innovation in an era of contestation and crisis.

Melissa Castillo Planas is Associate Professor in theof English Department at Lehman College, CUNY. She is the author of A Mexican State of Mind.

Debra A. Castillo is the Emerson Hinchliff Chair of Hispanic Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell University. She is the author or coeditor of several books, including Centering Borders in Latin American and South Asian Contexts, South of the Future, and The Scholar as Human.

This gorgeous mosaic of stories offers both the opportunity to collectively grieve what so many educators and students need in these times, and insightful lessons from engaged scholars making the best of impossible circumstances while holding the ethics of care, equity, and racial justice front and center.

Jessica Retis, coeditor of Reporting on Latin/a/x Communities:

With a collective voice, this much-needed book contributes significantly to discussions within academia about how scholars, as both researchers and educators, have developed new strategies during the pandemic to remain engaged with diverse communities of students.