Securing the Romantic Body: The Politics of Vaccination

Travis Chi Wing Lau is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, the history and theory of the novel, the history of medicine, disability studies, and gender and sexuality studies. His dissertation, tentatively titled “Prophylactic Fictions: Immunity and Biosecurity,” explores the British literary and cultural history of immunity and the politics of vaccination beginning in the eighteenth century. His academic work has been published in the Journal of Homosexuality and Romantic Circles.