TRUSTEES OF INDIANA UNIVERSITY

We welcome you to this unfolding collection of reflections, in text, sound, and image, on the time of the pandemic... Our collection takes as a starting point the words noli me tangere-"touch me not" (or "do not hold/grasp/cling to me" in the Greek). These words from the New Testament (John 20:17), spoken by Jesus to Mary Magdalene in the garden after her discovery of his empty tomb, take on, we think, powerful resonances in the epoch of COVID-19, with its prohibitions on touching and imperatives around social distancing-but also in the context of the urgent contemporary politics of heightened social tension, conflict around racial difference, and climate catastrophe. Touch and intimacy in all of their senses and contexts, private and public, between persons and in the context of environmental crises, are both invited and forbidden... Noli me tangere-"touch me not" (or μή μου ἅπτου - "do not hold/grasp me" in the Greek)