Reviews for Cinematic Prophylaxis: Globalization and Contagion in the Discourse of World Health

The average rating for Cinematic Prophylaxis: Globalization and Contagion in the Discourse of World Health based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-06-21 00:00:00 John Mcmanus The main thrust of this book is that there has been an enduring relationship between the visual culture of global health and notions of contagion in and around Hollywood. For example, in the first and strongest chapter, Ostherr links the emergence of the public health film circa the 1920s--which she characterizes as part of a drive to render visible and therefore contain the otherwise invisible spread of disease in the post-WWI era--to the moral panic during the same era around the supposed danger that Hollywood represented for impressionable audiences (women, children, and immigrants). Another chapter deals with the alien invasion film of the 1950s as expressing post-WWII fears about not only Communist invasion or immigration, but also homosexuality -- thus setting the stage for (the topic of a later chapter) AIDS movies of the 1990s. I think this is a strong dissertation-turned-into-book-manuscript -- and I don't meant that to be dismissive. I'm giving it 4 stars partly because it was useful for thinking about the corpus, methodology, and structure of my dissertation.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-01-26 00:00:00 Josef Peyer Read it pretty quickly when someone referenced it in relation to an article I am writing on disease maps. The sections on maps and early health films were well researched and made compelling arguments about how these construct the viewing subject. I look forward to giving this a more leisurely read at some point.