Contagious:
Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative
Priscilla Wald

“Rippling across the span of the twentieth century, Priscilla Wald’s book traces the trajectories of ‘outbreak narratives,’ stories about the spread and conquest of contagious diseases. With beautifully crafted prose, Wald shows how the scientific and fictional, social and microbial intermingle as outbreak narratives confront an essential paradox, that human connectedness both imperils and saves us. Contagious is essential reading for science studies, for the field of literature and medicine, and indeed for anyone interested in the social, discursive, and cultural implications of epidemiology.”—N. Katherine Hayles, University of California, Los Angeles

“Wald stunningly demonstrates how epidemics are forms of cultural autobiography, telescoping stories of outbreak and contagion that are reflected in our myths, symbols, archetypes, and social networks. Beautifully written and passionately argued, Contagious is required reading for those interested in learning how our diseases shape the ways we think about ourselves and our relationships and how our desires to be close to other people overlap with our anxieties about being infected by them.”—Jonathan Michel Metzl, author of Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs

(separate keywords with
commas e.g., smith, john) New Views on Modernity

Freedom's Empire:
Race and the Rise of the Novel in Atlantic Modernity, 1640—1940
Laura Doyle

The French Atlantic Triangle:
Literature and Culture of the
Slave Trade
Christopher L. Miller

Mediterranean Crossings:
The Politics of
an Interrupted Modernity
Iain Chambers

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