Contagion

<p>In the age of HIV, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the Ebola Virus and BSE, metaphors and experience of contagion are a central concern of government, biomedicine and popular culture.<br><br><em>Contagion</em> explores cultural responses of infectious diseases and their biomedical management over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also investigates the use of 'contagion' as a concept in postmodern reconceptualisations of embodied subjectivity.<br><br>The essays are written from within the fields of cultural studies, biomedical history and critical sociology. The contributors examine the geographies, policies and identities which have been produced in the massive social effort to contain diseases. They explore both social responses to infectious diseases in the past, and contemporary theoretical and biomedical sites for the study of contagion.</p> <p><strong>Introduction</strong><br>Contagion, Modernity and Postmodernity<br><strong>Contagion and Cultural Histories of the Modern World</strong><br>1. The Meaning of Contagion: Reproduction, Medicine and Metaphore<br>2. Foreign Bodies: Vaccination, Contagion and Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century<br>3. Moral Contagion and the Will: The Crisis of Masculinity in <em>Fin-de-Siécle</em> France<br>4. Excremental Colonialism: Public Health and the Poetics of Pollution<br>5. Leprosy and the Management of Race, Sexuality and Nation in Tropical Australia<br>6. Sanitary Failure and Risk: Pasteurisation, Immunisation and the Logics of Prevention<br><strong>Contaminating Capacities in Postmodernity</strong> 7. Vulnerable Bodies and Ontological Contamination<br>8. A Pig's Tale: Porcine Viruses and Species Boundaries<br>9. Taking the HIV Test: Self-Surveillance and the Making of Heterosexuality<br>10. The Promiscuous Placenta: Crossing Over<br>11. Carrier - Becoming Symborg</p>