SPS22-74G-UB

Forced to Relocate: COVID-19 and Moving Back into a Childhood Bedroom

By: Vanessa Hardin

Department: Geography

Faculty Advisors: Dr. Nancy Wilkinson and Dr. Courtney Donovan

In 2019, the first case of SARS-CoV-2, short for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, was documented in Wuhan, China. Now commonly referred to as COVID-19, the disease rapidly spread and has created many challenges for individuals ranging from economic issues to physical illness and emotional difficulties. These challenges have especially impacted college students, particularly those living in campus housing. This research examines how college students who were forced to relocate from campus housing and move back into a childhood bedroom during the COVID-19 pandemic interact with space at the scales of their bodies and bedrooms. While exploring emotional geographies and resilience, participants use artwork and storytelling to convey how they have adapted to and changed the space of their childhood bedroom and interact in their bedroom and parents’ home. This work also seeks to determine if students can identify if there are places within the spaces of their bedrooms. Focusing largely on trauma that has taken place in childhood bedrooms, I draw upon work by feminist geographer, Rachel Pain, to help explain the geotrauma and geographic disassociations that occur in the small space of a childhood bedroom.