Parasites, Worms, and the Human Body in Religion and Culture

Eleven papers from a 2008 conference on the Wormy Corpus held at Boston U. answer the question posed in the preface by editor Misha Todd (religious studies, Loyola Marymount U.): "Why honor the creepy and the crawly with an interdisciplinary body of analyses?" He is joined by editor Brenda Gardenour (history, Saint Louis College of Pharmacy) and contributors with academic specialties in a range of fields including religion, medical anthropology, ethnobiology, French literature--all of whom are willing to examine cultural and conceptual aspects of worms--perceived as "anathema to humanity"--and parasites--a term that evolved from its origins denoting a particular kind of religious relationship. Annotation Ac2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Brenda Gardenour holds a PhD in medieval history from Boston University and is currently Assistant Professor of History at the Saint Louis College of Pharmacy. She has been a Fulbright scholar in Madrid, an Evelyn Nation research fellow at the Huntington Library in California, and an NEH fellow at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London. Her current research examines the use and abuse of Aristotelian discourse in the medieval world and its continued influence on the deeper structures of modern mentalites, particularly those linked with the horror genre.
Misha Tadd is a PhD candidate at Boston University specializing in Early Daoism. He received a Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Doctoral Fellowship for his work on Heshanggong zhu, a little-studied, but seminal, Daodejing commentary. Through this text, his dissertation explores the intersection of body, religion, and politics, and the ideal of harmony between the individual and society. Currently, he is an adjunct faculty member at Loyola Marymount University.