University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2018 Prophylactic Fictions: Immunity And Biosecurity Travis Chi Wing Lau University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Recommended Citation Lau, Travis Chi Wing, "Prophylactic Fictions: Immunity And Biosecurity" (2018). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2987. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2987 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2987 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Prophylactic Fictions: Immunity And Biosecurity Abstract Prophylactic Fictions traces a prehistory for what I term inoculation insecurity, by which I mean a constellation of political and cultural anxieties surrounding the legitimacy, safety, and efficacy of a developing medical procedure used to preserve the health of its subject in advance of infection. I read a collection of pamphlets, poetry, plays, essays, and novels that witness the evolution of this procedure from early eighteenth-century variolation (inoculation by smallpox matter) to late eighteenth-century vaccination (inoculation by cowpox matter). The culture wars inaugurated by Edward Jenner’s revolution of preventative medicine through vaccination grappled with the right of the government and the medical establishment to literally puncture the bodies of citizens on the grounds that England was “threatened,” be it by French radicalism or by foreign bodies and objects crossing English borders. Bringing this rich archive to bear on readings of canonical novels like Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year and Bram Stoker’s Dracula resituates them at the locus of intense debates about the persistently insecure relationship between the body (individual and social) and the state. Attention to the transitions in the co-constituent domains of medicine and literature during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reveals that inoculation’s preventative function has never been purely a biological issue. At stake were not only the changes in medical technology and practice but also the professionalization and institutionalization of medicine itself. My project recalibrates the axes by which we tend to narrate the history of medicine: vaccine skepticism was not simply a refusal of medical innovation but a direct challenge to the state’s cooptation and misuse of medicine in the name of “national security.” Can and should the state be able to monitor, regulate, or even make compulsory health interventions based purely on the need to prevent imagined threats? Literary and cultural production in this period captures the conflicting ways in which health threats were imagined and secured. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group English First Advisor Michael Gamer Second Advisor Lance Wahlert Keywords biosecurity, eighteenth century, immunity, nineteenth century, security, vaccination This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2987 PROPHYLACTIC FICTIONS: IMMUNITY AND BIOSECURITY Travis Chi Wing Lau A DISSERTATION in English Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2018 Supervisor of Dissertation Co-Supervisor of Dissertation _____________________ ________________________ Michael Gamer Lance Wahlert Professor of English Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics & Health Policy Graduate Group Chairperson __________________________ David L. Eng, Richard L. Fisher Professor of English Dissertation Committee Emily Steinlight, Stephen M. Gorn Family Assistant Professor of English Toni Bowers, Professor of English PROPHYLACTIC FICTIONS: IMMUNITY AND BIOSECURITY COPYRIGHT 2018 Travis Chi Wing Lau iii DEDICATION For my parents and Nolan. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have often described my committee as a “dream team” for each member’s generous attention to my thinking and writing since my field exam. Michael Gamer first convinced me of the exciting potential of this project by reminding me of my strange knack for “noticing what’s weird about a text.” It was through our many sessions of thinking aloud together that these chapters first took shape. Lance Wahlert has compassionately coached me step by step through the biggest hurdles of my graduate career and introduced me to the medical humanities and to the history of medicine. I owe so much of my pedagogical style to Lance, and I am indebted to him for my intellectual formation as an interdisciplinary scholar. Emily Steinlight remains one of the most incisive readers of my work and consistently models what innovative scholarship looks like. This project owes much of its theoretical thrust to Emily’s unparalleled synthetic thinking and thoughtful recommendations. Toni Bowers challenged me many years ago to think about what kind of interventions I want to make in the field, and her guidance has kept me focused on the real stakes of this project. The completion of this manuscript would have been entirely impossible without Kate Aid’s editorial eye—thank you for inhabiting my prose and transforming it from within. My deepest gratitude to Ann Kibbie for reading early versions of my final chapter and sharing with me her forthcoming work on blood transfusion and Victorian literature. I am indebted to Nadja Durbach not only for her foundational scholarship but for sharing with me her annotated copy of J. J. Garth Wilkinson’s “Vaccination Vampire.” Last but not least, I remain so thankful for Chris Loar and Adam Sills, who published a version of my first chapter, which was awarded v the William Patrick Day Essay Prize, as well as for Chris Mounsey and Stan Booth, who graciously found a home for a disability-centered version of my third chapter. I am very fortunate to have found myself in a real intellectual community here at Penn. My intellectual home has been the Eighteenth-Century Reading Group, which warmly welcomed me when I first arrived in 2012. I am proud to have contributed to this group’s development into the Restoration–Victorian Reading Group, which continues to bring together scholars near and far for exciting collaborations and conversations. Res– Vic has helped to develop my works in progress, and this manuscript reflects much of the influence and support of many of the group’s members, old and new. Mayelin Perez and Chris Chan, Zach Fruit and Kerry McAuliffe: you all have worked so hard to grow our little community, and we appreciate you going above and beyond for us. The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) community has been vital to the life of this project. Versions of each chapter appeared in some form at an ASECS meeting. Many thank-yous to Jason Farr and Chris Mounsey for putting me on my first ASECS panel and for selecting me to chair the Disability Caucus, which continues to feature work that pushes the boundaries of our field. In the ongoing process of getting to know a field, it is empowering to connect with like-minded scholars who share the same investments. A project’s scholarly intervention begins and extends through collaboration, and I am always energized by the conversations that go on to become collaborations and future panels. Belonging can be such a difficult thing in the academy, but the Gay & Lesbian Caucus (thank you, Ula Klein and Declan Gilmore- Kavanagh) and the Disability Caucus have been nothing but welcoming and supportive to young scholars like myself. Shout-out to all of us representing team #c18! vi The process of imagining and writing a dissertation can so often be an isolating and solitary endeavor. Bringing this project to fruition was an act of survival in many ways, and such survival demanded tender forms of care and love throughout the years of writing this manuscript. I cannot begin to give proper thanks for the unconditional support that my parents have provided since I first made the decision to apply to graduate school. They enabled me not only to immerse myself in my studies but most importantly to thrive. At the moment of this project’s inception, I had the great fortune of meeting Nolan Wehr, who did not hesitate to move halfway across the country to support me through the difficult learning process of becoming a scholar and a partner worthy of the love he continues to show me. Our little furball Mercury watches on sleepily from the sidelines but believed in me and in this project when I did not. To my grandfathers now at rest: these pages are for you. Beyond the academy, I have continued to pursue my love of taiko drumming with Kyo Daiko and the rest of the northeast taiko community. The demands of thought labor can be punishing, and returning to my body each week for practice and performance has been crucial to my wellbeing. Taiko, as an embodied art form, temporarily displaces me from the often overwhelming feelings of anxiety and overthinking that take over during the writing process. I have found myself returning to the spiritual and physical lessons that were taught to me by my former sensei, Seiichi Tanaka, of San Francisco Taiko Dojo. But most of all, I find such joy in collective music-making with some of the strongest women I know—these are synchronicities that I don’t always get to experience in my profession. vii Katharine Berg has been in my corner since I first walked into her office during my turbulent first year of graduate school. Our weekly conversations have been moments of necessary grounding, recenterings during what has been a long process of making and remaking myself in the academy. With Katharine’s help, I have been able to confront difficult questions and episodes in my life, and I will be forever thankful for her patience and openness to my experiences. What defines our relationship is the quality of our conversation—she still remains my best interlocutor, for I have always felt clearer and more confident about myself and the world leaving her office.