Cultures of Contagion (The MIT Press)

Contagion as process, metaphor, and timely interpretive tool, from antiquity to the twenty-first century.

Cultures of Contagion recounts episodes in the history of contagions, from ancient times to the twenty-first century. It considers contagion not only in the medical sense but also as a process, a metaphor, and an interpretive model—as a term that describes not only the transmission of a virus but also the propagation of a phenomenon. The authors describe a wide range of social, cultural, political, and anthropological instances through the prism of contagion—from anti-Semitism to migration, from the nuclear contamination of the planet to the violence of Mao's Red Guard.

The book proceeds glossary style, with a series of short texts arranged alphabetically, beginning with an entry on aluminum and "environmental contagion" and ending with a discussion of writing and "textual resemblance" caused by influence, imitation, borrowing, and plagiarism. The…