| |
| author |
Jean Conlon-Yoo
| | title |
Wearing the Ritual: Mask and Meaning in Visual Representations of Nursing Care During the 1918 and 2020 Pandemics
| | abstract |
Since the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, masking has emerged as a powerful ritual practice, rich
with meaning and cultural symbolism. From a traditional lens, what started as a standard public
health practice with photographic roots from the time of the third plague (1855–early 1900s) has
been exposed as a complex ritual of social and cultural negotiation, raising questions around
meaning, care, identity, protection, equity, and more. This dissertation examines what the nurse
masking ritual communicated, as revealed in visual representations of nurse masking during the
1918 Influenza and 2020 COVID-19 pandemics. Analyzing photographs, drawings, paintings,
graffiti, social media, sculpture, and video materials, this study investigated what the masked
identities of nurses represented and how they were constructed and interpreted across two global
health crises. The method used emerged from the recognition that rituals are often elusive and
indirect yet densely layered with symbolic and aesthetic meaning. Visual representations have
the capacity to illuminate, communicate, enact, and coproduce these symbolic dimensions in
ways similar to ritual practices. Images from the 1918 Influenza and 2020 COVID-19 pandemics
were purposively sampled, and materials that demonstrably depicted masking as a symbolic,
socially mediated practice during each pandemic period were prioritized. A researcher-designed
tool that adapted an established nursing theory of knowledge acquisition was used to structure
data analysis and to illuminate the empiric, aesthetic, personal, ethical, and emancipatory
dimensions of masking as both a care practice and a communicative ritual performance. The
research reveals how the nurse-masking ritual shaped and coproduced public understanding of
infection control, identity, collective responsibility, and nursing solidarity. Findings can be used
to inform more nuanced public health and nursing policy as well as academic and professional
education strategies for nurses.
| | school |
The Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, Drew University
| | degree |
D.M.H. (2026)
|
| advisor |
Merel Visse
Liana Piehler
|
| full text | JConlon-Yoo.pdf |
| |
