Touch in the Time of Corona : Reflections on Love Care and Vulnerability in the Pandemic Frontmatter Acknowledgements Table of Contents List of Figures Introduction 1 The Digital Hug: Love and Care from a Distance 2 On the Politics of Face Masks: A Danish Example 3 Dancing with the Virus: Moving through the Streets 4 Pandemic Stuckness: Cruise Ships and Home Isolation 5 The Tales of a Virus: Corona Temporalities Coda Endnotes Bibliography Index A chronicle a memoir a reflection on the pandemic and a cultural analysis of the new spatial social and epistemological forms that have arisen with it this volume weaves together cultural history aesthetics and urban and digital studies. It looks at the particular ways in which the possibilities for touch touching and being touched both physically and affectively are reconfigured by the pandemic. How are love care and humanity’s complex relationships with technology and nature played out in the interval between abandoned city centres and digitally mediated gatherings How can we comprehend the reconfiguration of relationships through the human response to the pandemic as an experience that concerns us all but affects each of us in different ways How do we think through the technological and material dependencies that the pandemic situation establishes And how does this allow us to imagine the world beyond the pandemic—both utopian and dystopian The essays in this book explore the new forms of intimacy and distance that are developing in the wake of COVID 19 offering a distinctive topical analysis in the fields of urban and digital studies