Contagion 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 research.

IntroductionContagion, Modernity and PostmodernityContagion and Cultural Histories of the Modern World1. The Meaning of Contagion: Reproduction, Medicine and Metaphore2. Foreign Bodies: Vaccination, Contagion and Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century3. Moral Contagion and the Will: The Crisis of Masculinity in Fin-de-Siécle France4. Excremental Colonialism: Public Health and the Poetics of Pollution5. Leprosy and the Management of Race, Sexuality and Nation in Tropical Australia6. Sanitary Failure and Risk: Pasteurisation, Immunisation and the Logics of PreventionContaminating Capacities in Postmodernity 7. Vulnerable Bodies and Ontological Contamination8. A Pig's Tale: Porcine Viruses and Species Boundaries9. Taking the HIV Test: Self-Surveillance and the Making of Heterosexuality10. The Promiscuous Placenta: Crossing Over11. Carrier - Becoming Symborg