Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : contagion as unruly subject / Breanne Fahs, Annika Mann, Eric Swank, and Sarah Stage -- "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 -- 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 -- 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 -- 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.