«‘Pandemics and the Media’ deftly examines the intersection of politics, popular culture, economics, and technology to provide
insight into the global preoccupation with pandemics. Marina Levina investigates the moral implications and cautionary tales
underwriting fears of contamination, carefully scrutinizing how meaning is crafted and circulated through various media. The
provocative case studies explore everything from the promiscuous bites of vampires to the geopolitical panic of zombie narratives
to the fragility of national security in popular films about contagions.» (Jeffrey Bennett, author of ‘Banning Queer Blood:
Rhetorics of Citizenship, Contagion, and Resistance’)
«In this exceptionally well-researched and thoughtful book, Marina
Levina reminds us that pandemics tell us as much about culture, economic relations, and political commitments as they do about
any ‘brute facts’ of the biological body. And those commitments matter. During a time when we see growing disparities in the
distribution of basic material resources and when fear of contagion is used to justify policies and interventions based on
implicit notions of the body as a racialized and sexualized threat, we need the kind of courageous scholarship that ‘Pandemics
and the Media’ exemplifies. Levina’s intellectual engagement with our most fundamental beliefs about risk, vulnerability,
the normal, and the pathological is a necessary first step toward realizing a critical, affirmative biopolitics.» (Kelly Happe,
author of ‘The Material Gene: Gender, Race, and Heredity after the Human Genome Project’)
«‘Pandemics and the Media’ deftly examines the intersection of politics, popular culture, economics, and technology to provide
insight into the global preoccupation with pandemics. Marina Levina investigates the moral implications and cautionary tales
underwriting fears of contamination, carefully scrutinizing how meaning is crafted and circulated through various media. The
provocative case studies explore everything from the promiscuous bites of vampires to the geopolitical panic of zombie narratives
to the fragility of national security in popular films about contagions.» (Jeffrey Bennett, author of ‘Banning Queer Blood:
Rhetorics of Citizenship, Contagion, and Resistance’)
«In this exceptionally well-researched and thoughtful book, Marina
Levina reminds us that pandemics tell us as much about culture, economic relations, and political commitments as they do about
any ‘brute facts’ of the biological body. And those commitments matter. During a time when we see growing disparities in the
distribution of basic material resources and when fear of contagion is used to justify policies and interventions based on
implicit notions of the body as a racialized and sexualized threat, we need the kind of courageous scholarship that ‘Pandemics
and the Media’ exemplifies. Levina’s intellectual engagement with our most fundamental beliefs about risk, vulnerability,
the normal, and the pathological is a necessary first step toward realizing a critical, affirmative biopolitics.» (Kelly Happe,
author of ‘The Material Gene: Gender, Race, and Heredity after the Human Genome Project’)