Andrea Kitta
East Carolina University, English, Faculty Member
- Associate Professor, East Carolina Universityedit
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Terms like “fake news” and “alternative facts” are a part of everyday life now, but what do these terms mean to folklorists? In this paper, I consider types of fake news, where fake news occurs, and what motivates people to create fake... more
Terms like “fake news” and “alternative facts” are a part of everyday life now, but what do these terms mean to folklorists? In this paper, I consider types of fake news, where fake news occurs, and what motivates people to create fake news. I also address fake news by looking at alternative health belief sites, including anti-vaccination sites, as precursors to other types of fake news and as a way to understand the intersection of fake news and belief. Additionally, I ask that we, as folklorists and folk, consider our own belief systems and how they affect our research.
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The Introduction to the edited collection Diagnosing Folklore: Perspectives on Disability, Health, and Trauma.
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Disease is a social issue, not just a medical issue. Using examples of specific legends and rumors,The Kiss of Death explores the beliefs and practices that permeate notions of contagion and contamination. Author Andrea Kitta offers new... more
Disease is a social issue, not just a medical issue. Using examples of specific legends and rumors,The Kiss of Death explores the beliefs and practices that permeate notions of contagion and contamination. Author Andrea Kitta offers new insight into the nature of vernacular conceptions of health and sickness and how medical and scientific institutions can use cultural literacy to better meet their communities' needs.
Using ethnographic, media, and narrative analysis, this book explores the vernacular explanatory models used in decisions concerning contagion to better understand the real fears, risks, concerns, and doubts of the public. Kitta explores immigration and patient zero, zombies and vampires, Slender Man, HPV, and the kiss of death legend, as well as systematic racism, homophobia, and misogyny in North American culture, to examine the nature of contagion and contamination.
Conversations about health and risk cannot take place without considering positionality and intersectionality. In The Kiss of Death, Kitta isolates areas that require better communication and greater cultural sensitivity in the handling of infectious disease, public health, and other health-related disciplines and industries.
Using ethnographic, media, and narrative analysis, this book explores the vernacular explanatory models used in decisions concerning contagion to better understand the real fears, risks, concerns, and doubts of the public. Kitta explores immigration and patient zero, zombies and vampires, Slender Man, HPV, and the kiss of death legend, as well as systematic racism, homophobia, and misogyny in North American culture, to examine the nature of contagion and contamination.
Conversations about health and risk cannot take place without considering positionality and intersectionality. In The Kiss of Death, Kitta isolates areas that require better communication and greater cultural sensitivity in the handling of infectious disease, public health, and other health-related disciplines and industries.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Medical Sociology, Folklore, Death Studies, Popular Culture, and 15 moreImmigration, Gender and Sexuality, Medical Ethics, Public Health, Medicine, Vampire Studies, Contemporary legends, Zombies, Contagion, Contagion Metaphors, Urban Legends, Contamination, Supernatural Folklore, human papillomavirus (HPV), and Slender Man
Diagnosing Folklore provides an inclusive forum for an expansive conversation on the sensitive, raw, and powerful processes that shape and imbue meaning in the lives of individuals and communities beleaguered by medical stigmatization,... more
Diagnosing Folklore provides an inclusive forum for an expansive conversation on the sensitive, raw, and powerful processes that shape and imbue meaning in the lives of individuals and communities beleaguered by medical stigmatization, conflicting public perceptions, and contextual constraints. This volume aims to showcase current ideas and debates, as well as promote the larger study of disability, health, and trauma within folkloristics, helping bridge the gaps between the folklore discipline and disability studies.
This book consists of three sections, each dedicated to key issues in disability, health, and trauma. It explores the confluence of disability, ethnography, and the stigmatized vernacular through communicative competence, esoteric and exoteric groups in the Special Olympics, and the role of family in stigmatized communities. Then, it considers knowledge, belief, and treatment in regional and ethnic communities with case studies from the Latino/a community in Los Angeles, Javanese Indonesia, and Middle America. Lastly, the volume looks to the performance of mental illness, stigma, and trauma through contemporary legends about mental illness, vlogs on bipolar disorder, medical fetishism, and veterans' stories.
This book consists of three sections, each dedicated to key issues in disability, health, and trauma. It explores the confluence of disability, ethnography, and the stigmatized vernacular through communicative competence, esoteric and exoteric groups in the Special Olympics, and the role of family in stigmatized communities. Then, it considers knowledge, belief, and treatment in regional and ethnic communities with case studies from the Latino/a community in Los Angeles, Javanese Indonesia, and Middle America. Lastly, the volume looks to the performance of mental illness, stigma, and trauma through contemporary legends about mental illness, vlogs on bipolar disorder, medical fetishism, and veterans' stories.
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Vaccinations and Public Concern in History explores vernacular beliefs and practices that surround decisions not to vaccinate. Through the use of ethnographic, media, and narrative analyses, this book explores the vernacular explanatory... more
Vaccinations and Public Concern in History explores vernacular beliefs and practices that surround decisions not to vaccinate. Through the use of ethnographic, media, and narrative analyses, this book explores the vernacular explanatory models used in inoculation decision-making. The research on which the book draws was designed to help create public health education programs and promotional materials that respond to patients’ fears, understandings of risk, concerns, and doubts. Exploring the nature of inoculation distrust and miscommunication, Dr. Andrea Kitta identifies areas that require better public health communication and greater cultural sensitivity in the handling of inoculation programs.
Research Interests: Pediatrics, Pediatrics, Folklore, Medical Anthropology, Health Communication, and 21 moreVaccines, Folk legends, Folk legends, Public Health, Pediatric nursing, Pediatric nursing, Human Papillomavirus Vaccine, Human Papillomavirus Vaccine, Contemporary legends, Contemporary legends, Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Risk Perception, Risk Perception, Pediatrics and Child Health, Vaccine, Urban Legends, Urban Legends, Pediatrics General /infection/vaccination/neonatal, HPV vaccine, and HPV vaccine
This paper addresses the relevance of medical folklore for vaccine policy intended to increase vaccination uptake. There are two primary claims of this paper: First, that dominant approaches to increasing US vaccination uptake have... more
This paper addresses the relevance of medical folklore for vaccine policy intended to increase vaccination uptake. There are two primary claims of this paper: First, that dominant approaches to increasing US vaccination uptake have largely been based on deficient understandings of the root causes of anti-vaccination behavior; and second, that superior approaches to evidence-based policy must enlarge the scope of that evidence base to include crucial findings on belief formation, technical, and risk communication, and the folklore of vaccination. The failure to attend to this evidence results in interventions that are disconnected from the factors actually driving vaccination refusal. The paper describes the deficiencies in dominant approaches, and based on its analysis of the root causes of anti-vaccination behavior recommends superior evidence-based policies that emphasize upstream structural determinants of health behaviors.
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Folk medicine and health practices have long been thought to be primarily old-fashioned and antithetical to modern medicine, whereas in actuality they are often used alongside and as a complement to mainstream medicine. The tension... more
Folk medicine and health practices have long been thought to be primarily old-fashioned and antithetical to modern medicine, whereas in actuality they are often used alongside and as a complement to mainstream medicine. The tension between vernacular authority and institutional authority has always been complex, but it has become increasingly so due to the Internet, both as a source of information and as a source of community. Online communities have defined not only how patients create identity but have also helped to define the care they choose and receive. These issues are further complicated by immigration and globalization and the rise in social movements such as feminism, LGBTQ rights, disability studies, and fat studies, among others.
Terms like “fake news” and “alternative facts” are a part of everyday life now, but what do these terms mean to folklorists? In this paper, I consider types of fake news, where fake news occurs, and what motivates people to create fake... more
Terms like “fake news” and “alternative facts” are a part of everyday life now, but what do these terms mean to folklorists? In this paper, I consider types of fake news, where fake news occurs, and what motivates people to create fake news. I also address fake news by looking at alternative health belief sites, including anti-vaccination sites, as precursors to other types of fake news and as a way to understand the intersection of fake news and belief. Additionally, I ask that we, as folklorists and folk, consider our own belief systems and how they affect our research.
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The introduction examines current and lacking trends within the folkloristic study of disability, healthy, trauma, and stigma while setting up the volume’s place within the emergent scholarly discourse.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, many outspoken religious groups declared that they didn’t need masks or vaccines because they were protected by God and the immune system He designed. This conflict between science and religion is not new but... more
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many outspoken religious groups declared that they didn’t need masks or vaccines because they were protected by God and the immune system He designed. This conflict between science and religion is not new but highlights one area of vaccine hesitancy that is often misunderstood. In this essay, I’ll explore the logic and belief of the intersection of religion, freedom, and the COVID-19 vaccine. In media interviews, when I’ve been asked about religious vaccine hesitancy, most outlets have assumed that smaller groups, such as the Amish or Jehovah’s Witnesses, are the most likely culprits instead of larger group like Catholics and Evangelical Christians. Even though the leaders of these denominations support vaccination, their followers often use otherwise dismissed arguments to justify their personal beliefs, demonstrating themselves as “true believers.” Historically, rejecting what church leaders say would have caused rejection from the group, however, in this brave new world, individuals justify their personal belief systems over the official belief systems.
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: Laupus Library History Collections & the Department of Bioethics & Interdisciplinary Studies
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Narratives of Cancer Survivors in Religions Life is a careful consideration of the narratives of cancer survivors, specifically those in Catholic religious life. Through the use of interviews and secondary sources, the author addresses... more
Narratives of Cancer Survivors in Religions Life is a careful consideration of the narratives of cancer survivors, specifically those in Catholic religious life. Through the use of interviews and secondary sources, the author addresses such issues as relationship with God, ...
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In spite of the success of the childhood inoculation movement, questions about vaccines have increasingly been an object of concern for Canadians. This thesis explores vernacular beliefs and practices that surround decisions not to... more
In spite of the success of the childhood inoculation movement, questions about vaccines have increasingly been an object of concern for Canadians. This thesis explores vernacular beliefs and practices that surround decisions not to vaccinate, with the primary aim of providing ...