Description
Book SynopsisMoving from viruses, vaccines, and copycat murder to gay panics, xenophobia, and psychopaths,
Transforming Contagion energetically fuses critical humanities and social science perspectives into a boundary-smashing interdisciplinary collection on contagion.
Trade Review“This is an extraordinary book that radically rethinks and expands our understanding of contagion. Crossing historical, geographical and disciplinary boundaries,
Transforming Contagion brings a feminist, queer and new materialist perspective that insists on the possibilities as well as the risks and anxieties of contagion.”
-- Rosalind Gill * author of New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity *
“Traversing the humanities and social sciences, the essays in Transforming Contagion offer a fertile prism for exploring how contagion--the spread of beliefs, emotions, texts, practices, people, and pathogens across communities and culture--has been represented, experienced, addressed, and theorized across disciplines and historical periods. This volume establishes contagion as a central keyword for studying not only biomedical but also cultural, psychological, and political forms of connection, communication, and collective action.”
-- David Zimmerman * author of Panic!: Markets,Crises, and Crowds in American Fiction *
"Chronicle of Higher Education 'New Scholarly Books' Weekly Book List, August 31, 2018," compiled by Nina C. Ayoub * Chronicle of Higher Education *
"This edited collection of essays examines the forms, meanings, and processes of contagion across modes and sites of transmission, historical periods, and methods of scholarly analysis. This broadly referenced text is an excellent example of scholarship in the critical humanities and social science disciplines. Highly recommended." * Choice *
Table of ContentsContents
Introduction: Contagion as Unruly Subject
Breanne Fahs, Annika Mann, Eric Swank, and Sarah Stage Part I – Quarantine/Exposure
- “A Proper Contagion”: The Inoculation Narrative and the Immunological Turn
C.C Wharram- Before the Cell, There Was Virus: Rethinking the Concept of Parasite and Contagion Through Contemporary Research in Evolutionary Virology
Annu Dahiya- Social (Ir)Responsibility: Vaccine Exemption and the Ethics of Immunity
Rachel Conrad Bracken - “Radiophobia” and the Politics of Social Contagion
Majia Nadesan Part II – Flesh/Spirit
- Isn’t Contagion Just a Metaphor?Reading Contagion in Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year
Annika Mann- Contagious Accumulation and Racial Capitalism in Late Nineteenth Century American Fiction
Justin Rogers - Cooper- Performance and the Contagious Swirl of Dramatic Tradition: Performative Revision and Subversion
Patrick Maley Part III – Madness/Reason
- Viral Murder: Contagious Killings and Epidemic Beliefs
Marlene Tromp- Am I a Psychopath?
Sadie Mohler- Cult of the Penis: Male Fragility and Phallic Frenzy
Michelle Ashley Gohr Part IV – Revolution/Bureaucracy
- Fear of the Diseased Immigrant: Contagion, Xenophobia, and Belonging
Louis Mendoza- Prophylactic Policing and the Epidemiology of Dissent in the Soviet-Era Baltic States
Edward Cohn- Sexual Politics and Contagious Social Movements
Eric Swank- Words on Fire: Radical Pedagogies of the Feminist Manifesto
Breanne Fahs Index
Acknowledgments
About the Contributors
