The series (Re)making Sense: The Humanities and Pandemic Culture examines the utility of the arts and humanities for helping us navigate the ethical challenges and practical reinventions that lie before us. 

We live in an age in which smartphone owners are also photographers and videographers, and images can be disseminated, reproduced, and doctored in the blink of an eye. How do we know when we're seeing an important or iconic image? What role does the academic study of visual culture, through such disciplines as film studies and art history, play in shaping the ways we now process and use images? How do avant-garde and contemporary visual practices respond to the current moment? Can we trace the emergence of a post-pandemic iconography?

As film collection supervisor for Pacific Film Archive, Antonella Bonfanti oversees film and video archival, acquisition, and preservation projects.

Abigail De Kosnik is director of the Berkeley Center for New Media and associate professor of theater, dance, and performance studies. Her book Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom examines the practice of archiving in the transition from print to digital media. 

Filmmaker and scholar Jeffrey Skoller is associate professor of film and media. His cinematic and scholarly work explores relationships between film and contemporary art, the avant-garde and experimental film, and hybrid genres such as the essay film and animated documentary.