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The fraught tension between science and religion has loomed large
in scholarship about the nineteenth century in Spain, especially
given the prominence of the Catholic Church and the discoveries
made by Wallace and Darwin. The struggle for epistemological
superiority between these two discourses (science and religion) has
served to overshadow certain corners of the cultural landscape
that, though prominent sites of intellectual exploration in their
day, have received comparatively less scholarly attention until
recently. Fringe Discourses brings together a group of essays that
seeks to restore a sense of the epistemological richness of
nineteenth-century Spain. By exploring the relationship between
epistemology, modernity, and subjectivity, these essays recover
significant efforts by Spanish authors and intellectuals to explain
human nature and their world, which seemed to be changing so
radically before their eyes. In doing so the essays also reveal
just how elastic the relationship was between science and
pseudoscience, genius and quackery. Offering a veritable
Wunderkammer, the authors collected here train their sights both on
curious fields of study (from pogonolgy, the science of beards, to
Spiritualism) and curiouser people (from a government spy on
undercover assignment in Morocco dressed as a Moorish prince to a
hypnotic huckster who dupes the queen regent). With other authors
focusing on science fiction dystopias, mystical journeys, and
anatomical symbology, Fringe Discourses reveals the Spanish
nineteenth century for the intellectual Wild West it was.
Sheds new light on what the WHO described as "the single most
devastating infectious disease outbreak ever recorded," focusing on
social control, gender, class, religion, national identity, and
military medicine's reactions to thepandemic. Situating the Iberian
Peninsula as the key point of connection between Europe and the
Americas, both epidemiologically and discursively, The Spanish
Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 sheds new light on what the World
Health Organization described as "the single most devastating
infectious disease outbreak ever recorded." The essays in this
volume elucidate specific aspects of the pandemic that have
received minimal attention until now, including social control,
gender, class, religion, national identity, and military medicine's
reactions to the pandemic and relationship with civilian medicine.
While World War I, as the authors point out, is the context for
these discussions, the experiences of 1918-19 remain persistently
relevant to contemporary life, particularly in view of events such
as the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic and the Ebola outbreak of 2014.
Contributors: Catherine Belling, JosepBernabeu-Mestre, Liane Maria
Bertucci, Ryan A. Davis, Esteban Domingo, Magda Fahrni, Hernan
Feldman, Pilar Leon-Sanz, Maria Luisa Lima, Maria de Fatima Nunes,
Mercedes Pascual Artiaga, Maria-Isabel Porras-Gallo, Anny Jackeline
Torres Silveira, Jose Manuel Sobral, Paulo Silveira e Sousa,
Christiane Maria Cruz de Souza. Maria-Isabel Porras-Gallo is
professor of history of science in the Medical Faculty of Ciudad
Real at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). Ryan A. Davis
is assistant professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures,
and Cultures at Illinois State University.
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