The Center for 21st Century Studies is pleased to be hosting another Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow for the 2014-15 academic year:
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim
PhD, Visual and Cultural Studies
University of Rochester
Project: “Transmissions: Ambient Media and American Security in the Era of Emerging Infections”
Gloria Kim’s project hones in on how the invention of a new disease concept transformed both the visualization of disease and its forms of mediation. Her project begins with a key transformation in visual representation and mediation that took place in 1989 when U.S. government scientists invented the concept of Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID). EID describes diseases hitherto unknown to humankind, or which have resurfaced after a period of eradication. And the EID concept fundamentally changed the practices of global public health: in addition to expanding the scale of biological governance (from state-bound to biospheric), a move from strategies of prevention (addressing present threats) to those of pre-emptive biopreparedness (acting on potential pandemics) came to dominate U.S. approaches to global health.