Faculty Research Lecture by Nancy Tomes/History – Epidemics of Fear: Post-COVID Reflections on "Panic" as a Public Health Problem, on Wednesday, September 11, 2024 at 5:00-6:30 PM in 1008 Humanities. Respondents: Katherine Johnston, English and Program in Writing and Rhetoric; Ryan Mitchell, Program in Writing and Rhetoric; and Matthew Salzano, School of Communication and Journalism & Program in Writing and Rhetoric.

Nancy Tomes will talk about her new book project, Viral Fears: Historical Perspectives on Pandemic Futures, a study of the changing ways that public health experts, policy makers, and media gatekeepers have conceptualized fear, anxiety and panic as "problems" to be managed during outbreaks of novel infectious diseases.

Nancy Tomes is SUNY Distinguished Professor of History at Stony Brook University.  She has written four books: The Art of Asylum Keeping (1985), Madness in America, with Lynn Gamwell (1995), The Gospel of Germs (1998), and Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers (2016). She is currently writing a book titled Viral Fears: Historical Perspectives on Pandemic Futures.

Katherine D. Johnston is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stony Brook University. She is author of Profiles and Plotlines: Data Surveillance in Twenty-first Century Literature.

Ryan Mitchell is an Assistant Professor of the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine in the Program in Writing & Rhetoric at Stony Brook University. He is a rhetorical critic and health historian whose work considers how non-expert communities organize against imminent public health risks.

Matthew Salzano is an IDEA Fellow in Ethical AI, Information Systems, and Data Science and Literacy at Stony Brook University, jointly-appointed in the School of Communication and Journalism and the Program in Writing and Rhetoric. His scholarship has appeared in journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Women’s Studies in Communication.

Image: "Fear Uncertainty Doubt" by Paul Downey is licensed under CC BY 2.0.