Table Of ContentCultural studies/science studies/american studies
How should we understand the fear and fascination elicited by the accounts of communicable
disease outbreaks that proliferated, following the emergence of hiv, in scientific publications
and the mainstream media? The repetition of particular characters, images, and story lines—of
Patients Zero and superspreaders, hot zones and tenacious microbes—produced a formulaic
narrative as they circulated through the media and were amplified in popular fiction and film. wald
The “outbreak narrative” begins with an emerging infection, follows it through the global net-
works of contact, and ends with its containment. Priscilla Wald returns to the early years of
microbiology and “Typhoid Mary,” to the advent of virology and Cold War “alien” infiltration,
and to body snatchers and the hiv/aids pandemic to show how evolving ideas about contagion
C
and horror coalesced in the outbreak narrative. These stories of disease emergence have conse-
quences. They can affect survival rates, contagion routes, and economies. They can promote or
mitigate the stigmatizing of individuals, groups, locales, behaviors, and lifestyles. Contagious o
Contagious
shows how the stories we tell circumscribe our thinking about global health and human inter-
actions as the world imagines—or refuses to imagine—the next Great Plague.
n
“Contagious is a magnificent book, notable for its prose, its expansiveness, its courage, and its
rita Charon Cultures, Carriers, and
creativity.”— , founder of the Program in Narrative Medicine,
t
Columbia University Medical Center
a the Outbreak narrative
“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
g
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 i
literature and medicine, and indeed for anyone interested in the social, discursive, and cultural o
n. katherine hayles
implications of epidemiology.”— ,
University of California, Los Angeles
u
“Priscilla Wald stunningly demonstrates how epidemics are forms of cultural autobiography,
telescoping stories of outbreak and contagion that are reflected in our myths, symbols, arche- s
types, 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 our-
selves and our relationships and how our desires to be close to other people overlap with our
Jonathan Michel Metzl
anxieties about being infected by them.”— ,
author of Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs
Priscilla wald
is Professor of English at Duke University. She is the author
of Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form.
a John hope Franklin Center book
duke university Press
duke
Box 90660, Durham, NC 27708-0660 www.dukeupress.edu
Priscilla Wald
CONTAGIOUS
AJohnHopeFranklinCenterBook
∫ 2008 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free
paper $
Designed by C. H. Westmoreland
Typeset in Warnock Pro with Gotham display by
Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
and republication acknowledgments appear on the last
printed pages of this book.
InlovingmemoryofStanleyI.Wald
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Imagined Immunities: The Epidemiology of Belonging 29
2 The Healthy Carrier: ‘‘Typhoid Mary’’ and Social Being 68
3 Communicable Americanism: Social Contagion and
Urban Spaces 114
4 Viral Cultures: Microbes and Politics in the Cold War 157
5 ‘‘The Columbus of aids’’: The Invention of ‘‘Patient Zero’’ 213
Epilogue 264
Notes 271
Works Cited 323
Index 353
Acknowledgments
It is with great pleasure that I acknowledge the people, communities, and
organizations that have enabled me to write this book. I have been ex-
tremely fortunate in finding so many generous and passionate interlocutors
who have challenged me to think ever more deeply about the questions that
intrigued me and to push past my own assumptions to see those questions
in new ways. I have learned more from them than I can put into words and
could not have gotten this far without them. I regret that I do not have
space to acknowledge everyone to whom I owe thanks, but please know
how grateful I am to all of you.
I would like to thank the Cornell University Society for the Humanities
for the fellowship support that gave me time and resources to work on this
project as well as a wonderful community in which to do so. Special thanks
to Mary Pat Brady, Laura Brown, Kate McCullough, and Shirley Samuels
for the intellectual and social camaraderie during that year and beyond.
I have been especially lucky in having had assistance that went well be-
yond research from Monique Allewaert, Lauren Coats, Nihad Farooq, Erin
Gentry, Meredith Goldsmith, Elizabeth Klimasmith, Gretchen Murphy,
Eden Osucha, and Britt Rusert. Every aspect of the book is better because of
their research skills, thoughtful commentary, and helpful insights. Thanks
as well to Katherine Buse for patient and timely research assistance in the
final days of copy editing.
For conversations that significantly improved this book and every other
aspect of my work, I wish to thank Srinivas Aravamudan, Houston A. Baker
Jr., David Brady, Rachael Brady, Sherryl Broverman, Ana Mari Cauce, Vin-
cent Cheng, Robert Cook-Deegan, Kathryn Cook-Deegan, Lauren Dame,
Wai Chee Dimock, Michael Elliott, Lisa Freeman, Susan Gillman, Gerald
