New Book: Animal Illness and the Literary Imagination

Animal Illness and the Literary Imagination: A Cultural History of Animal Disease Management

Raymond Malewitz, Oregon State University

Published: December 2025

This book shows how major literary works from the eighteenthcentury to the present not only reflect but also shape the thoughts and anxieties of people struggling to navigate crises brought about by animal diseases and their accompanying containment strategies. These literary responses to animal illness remind us that audiences not only within but also far beyond veterinary, agricultural, and political spheres have (and have always had) a stake in these discussions. Like the virus that caused COVID-19, animal disease outbreaks have touched all our lives, and learning to recognize older manifestations of this contact in our language and our literatures enriches our understanding of who we are, how we have come to be, and how we want to proceed in our entangled, multi-species environments.

• Provides examples of how literature informs biopolitical debates on lethal forms of animal disease control
• Illustrates how contemporary One Health approaches to public health intersect with literary investigations in Human-Animal Studies
• Enables new perspectives on canonical literary works by figures ranging from 18th century authors such as Thomas Gray, Jonathan Swift, and Tobias Smollett to 20th and 21st century authors such as Zadie Smith, Larry McMurtry, and Juan Rulfo