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Emily Mendenhall
Tantor Audio

Unmasked: Covid, Community, and the Case of Okoboji

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AuthorEmily Mendenhall
PublisherTantor Audio
PublishedOct 24 2022
Book FormatAudio
ISBN-139798212169844
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CategoriesPolitical Science > Public Policy - General
LanguageEnglish

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Book Description

Unmasked is the story of what happened in Okoboji, a small Iowan tourist town, when a collective turn from the coronavirus to the economy occurred in the COVID summer of 2020. State political failures, local negotiations among political and public health leaders, and community (dis)belief about the virus resulted in Okoboji being declared a hotspot just before the Independence Day weekend, when an influx of half a million people visit the town. The story is both personal and political. Author Emily Mendenhall, an anthropologist at Georgetown University, grew up in Okoboji, and her family still lives there. As the events unfolded, Mendenhall was in Okoboji, where she spoke formally with over 100 people and observed a community that rejected public health guidance, revealing deep-seated mistrust in outsiders and strong commitments to local thinking. Unmasked is a fascinating and heartbreaking account of where people put their trust, and how isolationist popular beliefs can be in America's small communities.

Author Bio

Professor Emily Mendenhall is a medical anthropologist and Professor in the Science, Technology, and International Affairs (STIA) Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Prof. Mendenhall has published widely in anthropology, medicine, and public health and is the inaugural co-editor-in-chief of Social Science and Medicine—Mental Health.

Prof Mendenhall led a Series of articles on Syndemics in The Lancet in 2017 and has published several books, including Rethinking Diabetes: Entanglements with Trauma, Poverty, and HIV (2019), Syndemic Suffering: Social Distress, Depression, and Diabetes among Mexican Immigrant Women (2012), and Global Mental Health: Anthropological Perspectives (2015). In 2017, Dr. Mendenhall was awarded the George Foster Award for Practicing Medical Anthropology by the Society for Medical Anthropology.

Prof. Mendenhall’s newest book is forthcoming March 2022. Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji is a study of how people responded to COVID-19 in her hometown in northwest Iowa. Unmasked explores political priorities, cultural squabbles, and business interests that undermined public health efforts when no mandates were in place.

Some of this research on how people perceived and experienced coronavirus in rural Iowa has been published in Vox as well as Social Science and Medicine and Global Public Health. Prof Mendenhall also has ongoing research on syndemics in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she has worked for nearly a decade. She is the Principle Investigator of the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center study “Soweto Syndemics” at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she holds an honorary appointment.

Source: Georgetown University

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Unmasked: Covid, Community, and the Case of Okoboji

Political Science

Public Policy - General

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