Harvard Divinity School

Anti-Asian hate spiked 145 percent in 2020 during the height of the pandemic. At the same time, nearly one-third of the COVID deaths among nurses were Filipina nurses. As we look back at the first three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasingly complex stories continue to emerge. How can religious literacy and a lens of racial justice inform the stories that we and our students hear, tell, and seek out? The Religion and Public Life program at Harvard Divinity School hosted a conversation with Professor Aprilfaye Manalang of Norfolk State University to learn about her ongoing research on religious identity, grief, and COVID with Filipina-American nurses, as well as Jeanne Shin-Cooper of Buffalo Grove High School in Illinois whose students are taking part in this critical interview project. Prof. Manalang discussed her pedagogical practice of promoting Asian-American understanding at a Historically Black University, and the process of communicating this research to a public audience via podcast. This even