Syphilis and Subjectivity

Syphilis and Subjectivity Kari Nixon • Lorenzo Servitje Editors Syphilis and Subjectivity From the Victorians to the Present Editors Kari Nixon Department of English Whitworth University Spokane, WA, United States Lorenzo Servitje Department of English and Health, Medicine, and Society Program Lehigh University Bethlehem, PA, United States ISBN 978-3-319-66366-1 ISBN 978-3-319-66367-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66367-8 (eBook) Library of Congress Control Number: 2017955042 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Samantha Johnson Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Editors and Contributors Editors Kari Nixon is an assistant professor at Whitworth University. Her research focuses on the confluence of microbiology, germ theory, and social norms in the late nineteenth century. Her articles have appeared in Disability Studies Quarterly, Configurations: A Journal of Literature and Science, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, and Journal for Medical Humanities. Her co-edited collection, Endemic: Essays in Contagion Theory, was published with Palgrave in 2016. Lorenzo Servitje is Assistant Professor of Literature and Medicine at Lehigh University, working in the English Department and Health, Medicine, and Society Program. He researches the intersections of medical discourse and literature, focusing on the metaphorical militarization of medicine in the Victorian period. He also researches contemporary popular and technocultural representations of medicine. His articles have appeared in Journal of Medical Humanities, Critical Survey, Science Fiction Studies, Literature and Medicine, and Games and Culture. He has co-edited two collections, The Walking Med: Zombies and the Medical Image (Penn State, 2016) and Endemic: Essays in Contagion Theory (Palgrave, 2016). v vi Editors and Contributors Contributors Shannon K. Carter is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Central Florida. Her research focuses on social inequalities, reproduction, and mothering. She is currently conducting research on African American mothers’ breastfeeding experiences and peer breast milk sharing in Central Florida. Her collaborative research with Beatriz Reyes-Foster on peer milk sharing has been published in several outlets, including articles in Breastfeeding Medicine and The Journal of Human Lactation. Nicole Cosentino is enrolled in the University at Albany’s PhD program in English where she is studying queer theory and narratology in late 19th and early 20th century French, American, and British literature. She holds both a Bachelor’s degree in Adolescent English Education and a Master’s degree in English Literature from LIU Post. She teaches classes in composition, research, postcolonial literature, and queer theory; she also lectures on the works of Marcel Proust and Roland Barthes. She is in the process of writing her first book about queer literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Monika Pietrzak-Franger is a guest professor in the English Department at Hamburg University, Germany. Her books include, as author, The Male Body and Masculinity: Representations of Men in British Visual Culture of the 1990s (2007) and, as (co-)editor, Adaptations. Performing across Media and Genres (2009), Reflecting on Darwin (2013), and Women, Beauty, Fashion (2013). She is preparing a monograph Spectres of Syphilis: Medicine, Knowledge and the Spectacle of Victorian (In)Visibility, which focuses on the visualization of the disease in late Victorian culture, for which she has received funding from the Volkswagen Foundation. In 2012, she was a visiting fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University, St Louis. She has published on gender, medicine, visual culture and adaptation, and she is a co-editor of the journal Adaptation (OUP). Beatriz M. Reyes-Foster is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida. A medical anthropologist, she has conducted research on mental health in Mexico and peer milk sharing and vaginal birth after C-section (VBAC) in Central Florida. She and her collaborator, sociologist Shannon Carter, have published several articles on their work on peer milk sharing. Her articles have appeared in Anthropological Quarterly, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, and Critical Discourse Studies. Wendy Ryden is Associate Professor of English at LIU Post and Coordinator of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program. She has co-authored with Ian Editors and Contributors vii Marshall Reading, Writing, and the Rhetorics of Whiteness (2012) and is co-editor and contributor with Monika Elbert of the forthcoming collection, Haunting Realities: The Naturalist Gothic in American Realism (University of Alabama). She is also co-Chair with Irene Papoulis of the national Assembly for the Expanded Perspectives on Learning (AEPL), an NCTE assembly. JL Schatz is Director of Debate at Binghamton University where he serves as a lecturer and teaches courses on media & politics out of the English Department. He has published book chapters on the representations of apocalypse in the Terminator films, the construction of disability in the Resident Evil films, and the ecological security in the TV show Lost. Schatz has also published peer-reviewed journal articles on apocalypse and the environment as well as subjectivity in relation to teaching pedagogy in debate. He has also co-edited a special issue for the Journal of Critical Animal Studies and has been in charge of organizing several conferences, including the 13th and 14th Annual North America Institute for Critical Animal Studies and the 1st and 2nd Annual Eco-Ability Conference. Joanne Townsend holds a PhD on Venereal Disease in Victorian Britain, from the Department of History, University of Melbourne, Australia, in 1999. Her essay, “‘Unreliable Observations’: Medical Practitioners and Venereal Disease Patient Narratives in Victorian Britain,” has appeared in Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, Issue 9.2 (Summer 2013). Lisa Tyler is Professor of English at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, where she has taught for more than 20 years. She is the editor of Teaching Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (2008) and author of Student Companion to Ernest Hemingway (2001). She has presented at International Hemingway Society conferences in Stresa, Key West, Kansas City, Petoskey, and Venice, and has published articles on his writings in Hemingway Review, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Journal of Men, Masculinities, and Spirituality, and half a dozen edited collections. Livia Arndal Woods is a graduate teaching fellow at Queens College (CUNY) and a PhD candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center defending a dissertation titled “Heavy Expectations: Reading Pregnancy in the Victorian Novel” on October 30, 2016, under the direction of Professor Talia Schaffer. Her work has appeared in Victorian Network and Nineteenth Century Contexts and she will guest edit a forthcoming issue of Nineteenth Century Gender Studies in conjunction with the 2015 proceedings of the British Women Writers Conference, which she has co-chaired. Contents Introduction Kari Nixon and Lorenzo Servitje 1 Part I Structuring Syphilis 13 Medical Mappings of Syphilis in the Late Nineteenth Century Monika Pietrzak-Franger 15 Stigmatization, Syphilis, and Prostitution: The Discursive Construction of Sex Workers, Disease, and Feeblemindedness J. L. Schatz 39 Marriage, Motherhood and the Future of the Race: Syphilis in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain Joanne Townsend 67 Suspect Bodies, Suspect Milk: Milk Sharing, Wetnursing, and the Specter of Syphilis in the Twenty-First Century Beatriz M. Reyes-Foster and Shannon K. Carter 91 ix x Contents Part II Novel Infections 113 Not-So-Great Expectations: Pregnancy and Syphilis in Sarah Grand’s The Heavenly Twins Livia Arndal Woods 115 Unspeakable Horror: Outing Syphilis in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness Nicole Cosentino and Wendy Ryden 137 “Everybody Has It”: Syphilis and the Human Condition in the Writings of Ernest Hemingway Lisa Tyler 163 Index 183