Transforming Contagion
Risky Contacts Among Bodies, Disciplines, and Nations
Published on 5. July 2018
Book
Paperback/Softback
258 pages
978-0-8135-8958-9 (ISBN)
Description
2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Moving 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. The contributors provocatively suggest contagion to be as full of possibilities for revolution and resistance as it is for the descent into madness, malice, and extensive state control. The infectious practices rooted in politics, film, psychological exchanges, social movements, the classroom, and the circulation of a literary text or meme on social media compellingly reveal patterns that emerge in those attempts to re-route, quarantine, define, or even exacerbate various contagions.
Moving 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. The contributors provocatively suggest contagion to be as full of possibilities for revolution and resistance as it is for the descent into madness, malice, and extensive state control. The infectious practices rooted in politics, film, psychological exchanges, social movements, the classroom, and the circulation of a literary text or meme on social media compellingly reveal patterns that emerge in those attempts to re-route, quarantine, define, or even exacerbate various contagions.
Reviews / Votes
"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)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New Brunswick NJ
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
14 b-w figures
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 197 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
367 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8135-8958-9 (9780813589589)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
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.
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.
Content
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
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