Marcia Brennan recognized with award for superior teaching

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of presence. During this challenging year, we no longer met one another’s gaze directly in the classroom. Instead, we engaged each other through the multiple windowpanes of Zoom technology. We quickly came to appreciate the ways in which our computer screens are at once windows, filters, barriers and lifelines. So many times, we discussed questions of authenticity and reproduction, of resiliency and vulnerability, while considering how we navigate the unknown. With Zoom, a person can be as close as a block (or even, just a room) away, yet they still cannot be seen or touched directly. Key questions arose concerning proximity and distance, intimacy and isolation, as well as the need to rethink beginnings and endings, hellos and goodbyes. Just as we focused on issues of identity and communication, we considered how each of us defines topics such as acceptable risk, how we allocate resources, and how we value life itself on both the individual and collective levels. These experiences made us question whether access to technology is a new human right. Everyone agreed on the need for a moving humanism when facing such practical and ethical complications. Ultimately, this experience shed great light on the gift of presence in an age of social distancing.