Brinda Sarathy

Vivien Hamilton

Janet Farrell Brodie

The essays in this collection ask us to confront the toxic landscapes that pervade modern life. Taking us to sites of nuclear detonation, into neighborhoods impacted by oil drilling, and forests sprayed with pesticides, these stories ask how contaminated spaces have been created, whose health and well-being has been most impacted, and what role scientific experts have played in regulating radiation and chemical pollutants. If the proliferation of toxic spaces feels inevitable, then unraveling these hidden histories can help us to understand and resist these dynamics, and ultimately, imagine a different future.

Historical Perspectives on Contamination, Exposure, and Expertise

Inevitably Toxic

Drawing from a wide range of private and public sources, examines how American families gradually found access to taboo information and products for controlling the size of their families from the 1830s to the 1890s when a puritan backlash made most of it illegal. Emphasizes the importance of two shadowy networks, medical practitioners known as Thomsonians and water-curists, and iconoclastic freethinkers.

Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-century America

Marc Redfield

Professor of English & Comparative Literature Marc Redfield

High Anxieties is a collection of essays exploring the historical and ideological notions of addition, from the Opium Wars to the current war on drugs, to the internet.

Cultural Studies in Addiction

High Anxieties

Not a day goes by that humans aren’t exposed to toxins in our environment—be it at home, in the car, or workplace. But what about those toxic places and items that aren’t marked? Why are we warned about some toxic spaces' substances and not others? The essays in Inevitably Toxic consider the exposure of bodies in the United States, Canada and Japan to radiation, industrial waste, and pesticides. Research shows that appeals to uncertainty have led to social inaction even when evidence, e.g. the link between carbon emissions and global warming, stares us in the face. In some cases, influential scientists, engineers and doctors have deliberately "manufactured doubt" and uncertainty but as the essays in this collection show, there is often no deliberate deception. We tend to think that if we can’t see contamination and experts deem it safe, then we are okay. Yet, having knowledge about the uncertainty behind expert claims can awaken us from a false sense of security and alert us to decisions and practices that may in fact cause harm.

Janet Farrell Brodie

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