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.  

Contents

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