Once Upon a Virus
Once Upon a Virus
Diane E. Goldstein
200 pages

Published: 2004

ISBN 978-0-87421-587-8
paper $19.95

ISBN 978-0-87421-586-1
cloth $39.95

ISBN 978-0-87421-510-6
e-Book $15.50

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Once Upon a Virus

AIDS Legends and Vernacular Risk Perception

Diane E. Goldstein

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.

Diane E. Goldstein is associate professor of folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland and is cross-appointed to Memorial University's School of Medicine. She is editor of Talking AIDS: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, one of the earliest anthologies on AIDS, and has extensive experience working on AIDS policy-making initiatives with the Canadian government. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of American Folklore, Folklore, Ethnologies, Contemporary Legend, and The
Journal of Applied Folklore.