Here are 100 books that Folklore, Gender, and AIDS in Malawi fans have personally recommended if you like
Folklore, Gender, and AIDS in Malawi.
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I’ve been interested in medicine and how stories influence the decisions that people make for as long as I can remember. Watching family and friends make choices about their own healthcare was always fascinated to me and I was always curious as to why some narratives had more staying power than others. After getting my BA in history, I was lucky enough to talk to someone who suggested that I study folklore. I ended up with both a MA and PhD in folklore and became a professor who studies the intersection of folklore and how it affects the medical decisions we all make in our own lives and the lives of others.
This is an amazing book if you want to understand that disease isn’t just medical, it’s also cultural.
Contagiousreally describes how culture influences how we understand illness and how that affects treatment and care of individuals, including who we blame and how we understand risk.
People like to think of medicine and science as being detached and objective, but this book shows that simply isn’t true.
How should we understand the fear and fascination elicited by the accounts of communicable disease outbreaks that proliferated, following the emergence of HIV, in scientific publications and the mainstream media? The repetition of particular characters, images, and story lines-of Patients Zero and superspreaders, hot zones and tenacious microbes-produced a formulaic narrative as they circulated through the media and were amplified in popular fiction and film. The "outbreak narrative" begins with the identification of an emerging infection, follows it through the global networks of contact and contagion, and ends with the epidemiological work that contains it. Priscilla Wald argues that we…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I’ve been interested in medicine and how stories influence the decisions that people make for as long as I can remember. Watching family and friends make choices about their own healthcare was always fascinated to me and I was always curious as to why some narratives had more staying power than others. After getting my BA in history, I was lucky enough to talk to someone who suggested that I study folklore. I ended up with both a MA and PhD in folklore and became a professor who studies the intersection of folklore and how it affects the medical decisions we all make in our own lives and the lives of others.
I may be a bit biased on this one since Dr. Goldstein is one of my mentors, but this book really shows the power that narrative has when it comes to understanding illness and assessing risk.
Once Upon a Virus very clearly helps us understand why looking at disease and illness from the standpoint of the community is so important. If we want to promote any type of health behavior or change, we must adapt to the specific community instead of expecting the community to change.
Listening to these stories is crucial for public health and I really wish more people would read this book and understand that!
Once Upon a Virus explores how contemporary, or "urban," legends are indicators of culturally complex attitudes toward health and illness. Tracing the rich tradition of AIDS legends in relation to current scholarship on belief, Diane Goldstein shows how such stories not only articulate widespread perceptions of risk, health care, and health policy, they also influence official and scientific approaches to the disease and its management. Notions that appear in narratives of who gets AIDS, how and why, are indicators of broad issues involving health beliefs, concerns, and needs.
I’ve been interested in medicine and how stories influence the decisions that people make for as long as I can remember. Watching family and friends make choices about their own healthcare was always fascinated to me and I was always curious as to why some narratives had more staying power than others. After getting my BA in history, I was lucky enough to talk to someone who suggested that I study folklore. I ended up with both a MA and PhD in folklore and became a professor who studies the intersection of folklore and how it affects the medical decisions we all make in our own lives and the lives of others.
Emily Martin’s work was some of the first things I read when I wanted to understand how we understand medicine.
There’s such a gap between the health information we’re given and what we actually believe and Martin really covers how Americans have understood the concept of immunity and how we’re influenced by popular culture and the media.
This book is absolutely crucial for understanding both how we look at immunity and understanding how doctors are not free of bias.
Argues that changing attitudes towards sickness and immunity are reflected in other views, such as the trend towards temporary employees who can be let go when no longer needed
In 1913, a 15-year-old pregnant girl was found dead of apparent suicide. Dr. James Wilson, a new graduate and the first doctor ever to start a practice in this rural town, feels guilty over her death because of his delayed intervention.
I’ve been interested in medicine and how stories influence the decisions that people make for as long as I can remember. Watching family and friends make choices about their own healthcare was always fascinated to me and I was always curious as to why some narratives had more staying power than others. After getting my BA in history, I was lucky enough to talk to someone who suggested that I study folklore. I ended up with both a MA and PhD in folklore and became a professor who studies the intersection of folklore and how it affects the medical decisions we all make in our own lives and the lives of others.
When the pandemic first started and we learned that we would be teaching fully online, I snuck back into my office on campus to grab the books I knew that I would need during the pandemic. This was one of the first books I grabbed because I knew that I needed to reread it before I answered any questions about COVID.
Paula Treichler does an amazing job discussing how disease has an “epidemic of meanings” and how those meaning influence the decisions we make and how we treat others. This book clearly shows how some narratives take hold while others are obscured.
Paula A. Treichler has become a singularly important voice among the significant theorists on the AIDS crisis. Dissecting the cultural politics surrounding representations of HIV and AIDS, her work has altered the field of cultural studies by establishing medicine as a legitimate focus for cultural analysis. How to Have Theory in an Epidemic is a comprehensive collection of Treichler's related writings, including revised and updated essays from the 1980s and 1990s that present a sustained argument about the AIDS epidemic from a uniquely knowledgeable and interdisciplinary standpoint. "AIDS is more than an epidemic disease," Treichler writes, "it is an epidemic…
I have always been fascinated by how the human mind adapts, both individually and through history. Julian Jaynes, who taught me while pursuing my PhD in anthropology from Princeton University, provided me with a theoretical framework to explore how the personal and cultural configure each other. Jaynes inspired me to publish on psychotherapeutics, the history of Japanese psychology, linguistics, education, nationalism, the origin of religion, the Bible, ancient Egypt, popular culture, and changing definitions of self, time, and space. My interests have taken me to China and Japan, where I lived for many years. I taught at the University of Arizona and currently work as a licensed mental health counselor.
According to Julian Jaynes, the mentality predating consciousness was bicameral. To appreciate the subtlety of his arguments, a grand historical sweep is needed.
At over a thousand pages, this magisterial tour through the origins and impact of anthropology, sociology, linguistics, economics, and psychology affords context by showing how, from the sixteenth century to the present day, the emergence of a post-bicameral, introspective language of the self-played out in modern times.
A comprehensive history of the human sciences-psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science-from their precursors in early human culture to the present.
This erudite yet accessible volume in Norton's highly praised History of Science series tracks the long and circuitous path by which human beings came to see themselves and their societies as scientific subjects like any other. Beginning with the Renaissance's rediscovery of Greek psychology, political philosophy, and ethics, Roger Smith recounts how the human sciences gradually organized themselves around a scientific conception of psychology, and how this trend has continued to the present day in a circle of…
I stumbled upon Hickey’s memoirs and while reading them became captivated not only by the frequently hilarious episodes he recounts from his life, but also by the subject of autobiography and how narrating our life story somehow projects a sense of self and identity to the reader. Trying to grasp this process led me to exploring a wide range of books, and opened up understanding of how our selves are fashioned and what they mean to others. An endlessly fascinating subject.
The authors explore why and how personal narratives should be used as evidence (in my case, in history), and the methods and pitfalls of their use. The authors stress the importance of recognizing that stories that people tell about their lives are never simply individual. Rather, they are told in historically specific times and settings and call on rules, models, and social experiences that govern how story elements link together in the process of self-narration. Stories show how individuals' motivations, emotions, and imaginations have been shaped by their cumulative life experiences. This book reveals in simple, jargon-free prose the understanding that takes place between narrators of personal narratives and their audience and enriches the results immeasurably.
In Telling Stories, Mary Jo Maynes, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Barbara Laslett argue that personal narratives-autobiographies, oral histories, life history interviews, and memoirs-are an important research tool for understanding the relationship between people and their societies. Gathering examples from throughout the world and from premodern as well as contemporary cultures, they draw from labor history and class analysis, feminist sociology, race relations, and anthropology to demonstrate the value of personal narratives for scholars and students alike.
Telling Stories explores why and how personal narratives should be used as evidence, and the methods and pitfalls of their use. The authors stress…
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. Both began a historic journey with unique 'time capsules' on board intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record 12-inch gold-plated disk…
When I turned 80, I was in a bit of a funk until I began interviewing people in their eighties for my book. I was astonished to find how happy the vast majority of them were and what active and exciting their lives were leading. I realized that life after 70 and 80 was not the same today as in the past. As a psychotherapist, a social psychologist, a writer, a mother of four, and a grandmother of 10, I realized I was the perfect person to write about this good news. And for the last 8 years my mission has been to spread the word about aging today.
Louise Aronson was a practicing physician who worked primarily with older patients before becoming a social critic. Now she focuses on ageism in our medical institutions and well as society in general. Her book, Elderhood, is a penetrating analysis of what it means to be older in the US and a critique of the anti-aging culture we live in. Her book is filled with her own observations and stories that show the reader what needs to change in our culture and institutions. Her model of the three stages of life—childhood, adulthood, and elderhood intrigued me.
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Winner of the WSU AOS Bonner Book Award
The New York Times bestseller from physician and award-winning writer Louise Aronson--an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life, as revelatory as Atul Gawande's Being Mortal.
For more than 5,000 years, "old" has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more.…
What is my passion? Why sociology? I love sociology for several reasons: first, because you study everything, and I mean everything can be “the sociology of….” Second, because it uncovers the layers of deceit, image, and make-up that cover the surface; third, because it deals with deviance and deviant behavior (see my other Five Best on Deviance); and fourth, it explains social conflict. I’m always learning something new, and I love to impart that love of the unknown and the everyday to my thousands of students.
In fact several of his other books are classics like Enter Plato or For Sociology. I knew Gouldner. Gouldner felt you could not have remote sociology, that sociology has its subjective aspects, and that one’s biases must be spoken and told upfront and will always be there.
Furthermore, sociologists whether Marxist or liberal academic can never be purely “value-free” but are necessarily political and ideological. This may not be a surprise today in 2025, but back in 1970, it was a bombshell since sociology was supposed to be like all sciences: totally objective, impartial, and detached.
The student and Black protests of the late 1960s changed all that.
In the social sciences, at least, no group of academics has been more sympathetic to the students of the New Left than have sociologists, and David Riesman has even contended that the profession has contributed in some measure to the development of the movement. Ironically, New Left students who are now becoming New Left Ph.D.’s in sociology have begun to rebel against what they consider the “conservatism” of some of their ex-professors. Alvin Gouldner’s book argues that all of this presages the emergence of a new “radical” sociology, and he tries to create a theoretical framework to serve as its…
I am a Greek social psychologist and have spent much of my academic career studying myths and stories in social life - stories, even when inaccurate or wrong, serve to create meaning, a fragile and valuable resource, especially in these post-truth times. At the same time, I believe that we must not lose sight of the distinctions between story and fact, fantasy and reality, truth and fiction. I am greatly concerned that the social sciences today, as shaped by the academic publishing game, are preoccupied with trivia and act as black holes into which meaning disappears. I strongly believe that it is our responsibility to restore the meaningfulness of academic research.
This is an old-fashioned sociology book that shows what can be done with some sociological imagination. Many of us do entirely meaningless work and get paid for it, and what is more, we know that we do. And yet, we pay a high price for it. How to avoid doing empty labour and rediscover the meaning of serious academic work.
While most people work ever-longer hours, international statistics suggest that the average time spent on non-work activities per employee is around two hours a day. How is this possible, and what are the reasons behind employees withdrawing from work? In this thought-provoking book, Roland Paulsen examines organizational misbehavior, specifically the phenomenon of 'empty labor', defined as the time during which employees engage in private activities during the working day. This study explores a variety of explanations, from under-employment to workplace resistance. Building on a rich selection of interview material and extensive empirical research, it uses both qualitative and quantitative data…
Deputy Jenna Hart has only been working in her sleepy hometown of Pearl Springs for seven months when city officials begin to be targeted by a killer. Twenty years ago, the construction of a dam caused people to lose their land to eminent domain. That wound has not healed with…
Queens and queenship is a topic that has fascinated me since childhood when I first read about women like Cleopatra and Eleanor of Aquitaine. They ignited a passion to learn about the lives of royal women which led me from the ancient Mediterranean to medieval Europe, on into the early modern era, and has now gone truly global. I am particularly passionate to draw out the hidden histories of all the women who aren’t as well-known as their more famous counterparts and push for a fully global outlook in both queenship and royal studies in the works I write and the journal and two book series that I edit.
Theresa Earenfight is a renowned queenship scholar whose ideas about queens and queenship inspired me when I was a graduate student and continue to excite me today. This is a book that I recommend to my own students as the perfect place to start with medieval queenship. Earenfight’s book moves chronologically across the Middle Ages, drawing together examples of queens from all across Europe to illustrate key ideas about queenship and demonstrate how different women exercised the queen’s office. An engaging read which is underpinned by years of research and deep expertise in the field.
Medieval queens led richly complex lives and were highly visible women active in a man's world. Linked to kings by marriage, family, and property, queens were vital to the institution of monarchy.
In this comprehensive and accessible introduction to the study of queenship, Theresa Earenfight documents the lives and works of queens and empresses across Europe, Byzantium, and the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages. The book:
* introduces pivotal research and sources in queenship studies, and includes exciting and innovative new archival research * highlights four crucial moments across the full span of the Middle Ages - ca. 300, 700,…
