DISSERTATION description

In my dissertation, titled “The Bio Scare: anthrax, smallpox, SARS, flu and post-9/11 U.S. Empire”, I examine the role of gender and race in conceptions of infectious disease in the context of this era’s heightened attention to “national security”. In the U.S., growing concern over the rise in infectious diseases accelerated rapidly with the post-9/11 focus on “biological threats”—infectious diseases and potential biological warfare agents such as anthrax, smallpox, SARS and flu. Through textual analysis of mass media, law, science journals, and internet blogs, I focus on the ways in which “biological threats” have been imbricated with newly formed U.S. “biosecurity” measures that rely on women as health guardians of the nation against infectious disease threats represented as emanating largely from transnational Middle Eastern male (bio)terrorists and diseased Asian Others. I illustrate the role that these representations have played not only in generating media-driven scares in the U.S., but also in shaping the contours of post-9/11 U.S. Empire and nationhood.

Drawing heavily on feminist theory, theories of Empire, and cultural studies, my dissertation project contributes to an understanding of racialized geographies of disease and gendered economies of health. The processes of racialization and gendering occurring in the less visibly impacted realms of biomedicine and public health are in fact formative in shaping post-9/11 U.S. racial and national politics. In biomedicine, where funding has been diverted towards the dangerous arena of research and development of biological weapons, biosecurity measures have come to rely on laboratory safety policies based on excluding a stereotyped Middle Eastern bioterrorist. In public health, biosecurity measures focus on containing disease in the Orientalized locales of China and Asia. Women have been variously implicated in the defense against these racialized biological threats, both in their actual roles as front-line health care providers and as symbol of a white nation under siege by these transnational "Oriental" Others. Thus, my research shows that the discourse of “biological threats” intertwines with existing racist and sexist notions (Middle Eastern terrorists, disease-ridden Chinese and Asians, women as symbols of national purity and caretakers of national health) to produce a type of “microbial citizenship”, where national belonging is dependent on perceptions of one’s status as potential health-security risk. My research was funded by the UCLA Institute of American Cultures.

In my dissertation, titled “The Bio Scare: anthrax, smallpox, SARS, flu and post-9/11 U.S. Empire”, I examine the role of gender and race in conceptions of infectious disease in the context of this era’s heightened attention to “national security”. In the U.S., growing concern over the rise in infectious diseases accelerated rapidly with the post-9/11 focus on “biological threats”—infectious diseases and potential biological warfare agents such as anthrax, smallpox, SARS and flu. Through textual analysis of mass media, law, science journals, and internet blogs, I focus on the ways in which “biological threats” have been imbricated with newly formed U.S. “biosecurity” measures that rely on women as health guardians of the nation against infectious disease threats represented as emanating largely from transnational Middle Eastern male (bio)terrorists and diseased Asian Others. I illustrate the role that these representations have played not only in generating media-driven scares in the U.S., but also in shaping the contours of post-9/11 U.S. Empire and nationhood. Drawing heavily on transnational feminist theory, postcolonial theories of Empire, and cultural studies of science and medicine, my dissertation project contributes to an understanding of racialized geographies of disease and gendered economies of health.