Transforming Contagion

BREANNE FAHS is a professor of women and gender studies at Arizona State University. She is the author of several books, including Out for Blood: Essays on Menstruation and Resistance.ANNIKA MANN is an assistant professor of English at Arizona State University.She is the author of Reading Contagion: The Hazards of Reading in the Age of Print.  ERIC SWANK is an associate professor of social and cultural analysis at Arizona State University. SARAH STAGE is a professor of women and gender studies at Arizona State University. She is the author or co-editor of numerous books, including Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine.

“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)

• ContentsIntroduction: Contagion as Unruly SubjectBreanne Fahs, Annika Mann, Eric Swank, and Sarah StagePart I – Quarantine/Exposure “A Proper Contagion”: The Inoculation Narrative and the Immunological TurnC.C WharramBefore the Cell, There Was Virus: Rethinking the Concept of Parasite and Contagion Through Contemporary Research in Evolutionary VirologyAnnu DahiyaSocial (Ir)Responsibility: Vaccine Exemption and the Ethics of ImmunityRachel Conrad Bracken “Radiophobia” and the Politics of Social ContagionMajia NadesanPart II – Flesh/Spirit Isn’t Contagion Just a Metaphor?Reading Contagion in Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague YearAnnika MannContagious Accumulation and Racial Capitalism in Late Nineteenth Century American FictionJustin Rogers - CooperPerformance and the Contagious Swirl of Dramatic Tradition: Performative Revision and SubversionPatrick MaleyPart III – Madness/Reason Viral Murder: Contagious Killings and Epidemic BeliefsMarlene TrompAm I a Psychopath?Sadie MohlerCult of the Penis: Male Fragility and Phallic FrenzyMichelle Ashley GohrPart IV – Revolution/Bureaucracy Fear of the Diseased Immigrant: Contagion, Xenophobia, and BelongingLouis MendozaProphylactic Policing and the Epidemiology of Dissent in the Soviet-Era Baltic StatesEdward CohnSexual Politics and Contagious Social MovementsEric SwankWords on Fire: Radical Pedagogies of the Feminist ManifestoBreanne FahsIndexAcknowledgmentsAbout the Contributors